Ay O 



'^' .0> 



^ '^^. . 



^^ -^ 







f .♦^'V. 



* A 








V ^^ ^ *k ' 













.'^^% « 






"oie^ <^ 



































<fp s* * ail© * <' -y 'i<\ 





^ ■*' -°^ 
















'^0' 














-^..^^ 










^Cp*^- 







» ^9^ 
















; .^^"vr.. 






0^"^ ""^o'-^ 



Germany, France 
Russia, and Islam 



By 

Heinrich von Treitschke 



Translated into English 
for the First Time 



With a Foreword by 
Geo. Haven Putnam 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 
Zbc IknlcKerbocl^er ipress 
1915 






\5\>5oi 



Copyright, 1915 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



^/*f- 



Ube finfcfterbocfter ipres0, "Mew l^orft 

MAR 16 1915 

©CI,A39?147 



FOREWORD 

THE following essays were brought into print be- 
tween the dates of 187 1 and 1 895. They cover 
a varied group of subjects, but they are alike char- 
acteristic of the method of thought of the author 
and of the assured conclusiveness of his opinions. 
Treitschke does not make space for historic doubts 
or probabilities. He has the satisfaction of having 
arrived at final opinions in regard to actual con- 
ditions, while his predictions for the future are 
almost as assured as his descriptions of the present. 
The first essay in point of date was written in 1871 
while the provisions of the settlement with France 
were being put into shape by the authorities. It 
would hardly be accurate to say that these provi- 
sions were imder consideration with the people of 
Germany for, under the conditions existing, the 
people had very little to say in regard to the 
terms of the treaty. It is possible, however, 
that the views of Bismarck and Moltke (views 
which were accepted with little question by the 
old Emperor) may have been influenced, or at 
least have been strengthened, by the counsel of 
so good an advocate of Imperialism as Treitschke. 
In any case, the adjustment finally arrived at was 



iv Foreword 

in substantial accord with Treitschke*s recom- 
mendations. Treitschke phrases the German 
claim as follows: 

The sense of justice to Germany demands the 
lessening of France. Every intelligent man sees that 
that military nation cannot be forgiven, even for the 
economic sacrifices of the war, on the payment of the 
heaviest indemnity in money. Why was it that, 
before the declaration of the war, and before a single 
German newspaper had demanded the restitution of 
the plunder, the anxious cry rang through Alsace 
and Lorraine, "The dice are to be thrown to settle 
the destiny of our provinces' ' ? Because the awakened 
conscience of the people felt what penalty would have 
to be paid in the interests of justice by the disturber 
of the peace of nations. 

The term ''disturber of the peace" is one that 
might properly be recalled in 1914. 

Says Treitschke, again indulging in this case in 
prophecy which we may at this time feel not to 
have been well founded : 

The statesmen of the present day, whenever they 
have realized the altered equilibrium of the Powers, 
will feel that the strengthening of the boundaries of 
Germany contributes to the security of the peace of 
the world. We are a peaceful nation. The traditions 
of the Hohenzollerns, the constitution of our Army, 
the long and difficult work before us in the upbuilding 
of our united German State, forbid the abuse of our 
warlike power. 



Foreword v 

Europe might well wish that this counsel of the 
Imperial historian had been more thoroughly 
followed in the twentieth century. 

In regard to the rightfulness of securing control 
of the provinces, Treitschke writes as follows: 

In view of our obligation to secure the peace of the 
world, who will venture to object that the people of 
Alsace and Lorraine do not want to belong to us? . . . 
These territories are ours by the right of the sword, 
and we shall dispose of them in virtue of a higher 
right — the right of the German nation, which will not 
permit its lost children to remain strangers to the 
German Empire. We Germans, who know Germany 
and France, know better than these unfortunates them- 
selves what is good for the people of Alsace, who have 
remained under the misleading influence of their 
French connection outside the sympathies of new 
Germany. Against their will, we shall restore them 
to their true selves. 

There is a naivete in the admission that the 
people of the "lost provinces" have no desire 
to come into the family fold of Germany. The 
higher German wisdom knew forty-four years 
ago what was best for these people just as it knows 
to-day what is best for the people of Belgium who 
are, in like manner, being taken into the "kindly" 
fold of the German Empire. 

The following reference to France indicates 
that the assumption of a superiority of German 
civilization is not a discovery of the twentieth 
century : 



vi Foreword 

They [the French] have felt the weight of our 
sword, and we challenge the whole world to say 
which of the two combatants bore himself with the 
greater manliness, uprightness, and modesty. At all 
times the subjection of a German race to France has 
been an unhealthy thing; to-day it is an offence 
against the reason of History — a vassalship of free 
men to half -educated barbarians. 

With reference to Treitschke's claim, which was 
confirmed as the claim of Germany, that the 
appropriation of Alsace and Lorraine constituted 
a "restitution " of territory and of peoples that had 
been stolen from Germany, it may be in order to 
ask whether there does not apply, or whether there 
ought not to apply, to issues betw^een nations as to 
those between individuals, some statute of limita- 
tions? A period of one hundred years, for in- 
stance, in which time three generations of men have 
come into activity, might properly be accepted, 
under a common-sense code of international rela- 
tions, as sufficiently long to bar out grievances 
or appropriations that were back of the birth of 
the great-grandfathers of living men. If in the 
civilized relations of states, for which the world is 
now hoping, some such principle is accepted, an 
important portion of the texts, or the pretexts, 
for aggressive wars, will have been removed. It is 
in any case a dangerous doctrine for a Prussian to 
propagate that there is no time in the future in 
which the status of territory can be considered as 
fixed. If there was good foundation for the claim 



Foreword vii 

made by Prussia in 1871 that France must be held 
responsible for making restitution for the "rob- 
beries" of Louis XIV, question might well be 
raised as to the propriety of the restitution by 
Prussia of the Silesian provinces appropriated 
by Frederick the Great, and of the territories 
of Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover "annexed" 
under King William I. It would have been wiser 
if the Prussian historian and the Prussian diplomat 
of the time had left the word "restitution" out 
of their documents and had let the annexation of 
Alsace and Lorraine rest on the simple fact of 
desire and of conquest. 

Treitschke makes frank admission of the fact 
now known to history when he says: 

We owe it to the clear-sighted audacity of Count 
Bismarck that this war was begun at the right time 
— that the Court of the Tuileries was not allowed 
the welcome respite which would have permitted it to 
complete the web of its treacherous devices. . . . 
The war began as a work of clear and statesmanlike 
calculation. 

Treitschke was clearsighted enough to under- 
stand that this war had not been forced upon 
Germany by France, but was the result of the 
definite scheme of Bismarck. 

Treitschke emphasizes, and with good historic 
grounds, the terrible and stupid barbarities com- 
mitted by the armies of Louis XIV in certain 
towns and provinces of Germany. It would be 



viii Foreword 

difficult to reprobate too severely the futile wicked- 
ness of the devastation of the Palatinate. During 
the two centuries that have passed since that bar- 
barous campaign of Louis XIV, the nations were 
believed to have made progress towards more 
civilized standards; but to-day the world stands 
aghast by the ruthless devastation of Belgium. 
The destruction of Heidelberg in 1688 is paralleled 
by the ruin of Lou vain in 19 14. 

The following admission as to the relations of 
Alsace to France and of the indebtedness of the 
people to French organization is interesting. 
Treitschke says: 

But, alas! when we praise the Indestructible German 
nature of the man of Alsace, the subject of our praise 
declines to receive it. He adheres to his conviction 
that he is no Suabian, and that all Suabians are 
yellow-footed. He was introduced by France sooner 
than we Germans have been into the grand activity of 
the modern economical world. To France he owes a 
most admirable organization of the means of com- 
mercial intercourse, a wide market, the influx of 
capital on a great scale, and a high rate of wages, 
which, to this day, draws daily labourers in crowds 
at harvest-time from the fields of Baden across the 
Rhine. From the French he has learned a certain 
savoir-faire; his industrial activity, upon the whole, 
stands higher than that of his German neighbour. 

This paragraph may be compared with the earlier 
citation in which he refers to the ' ' semi-barbarity of 



Foreword ix 

the France that has been conquered by Germany." 
He adds: 

The war against Germany appeared in the eyes of 
the Alsatian peasantry to be a war for the liberty of 
their persons and for their bit of soil. 

The question of ** liberty of person" was doubt- 
less still in the minds of certain Alsatians at the 
time of the incident of Zabern. 

Treitschke speaks of the accounts given in the 
Erckmann and Chatrian novels as presenting a 
"clear picture" of conditions in the provinces, 
and summarizing, without contradicting, the con- 
clusions of the two novelists, he writes of the 
Pf alzburgers : 

In language and sentiment they are Germans, but 
they have lost the last trace of a remembrance of their 
ancient connection with the Empire. They are 
enthusiastic for the tricolore; they bitterly hate the 
Prussian; and the noveHsts themselves write in 
French ! 

Lorraine is, as Treitschke mourns, "more French 
in its sympathies than Alsace. It is in German 
Lorraine that we are threatened by the most em- 
bittered hostility. " "In both provinces, ' ' he says, 
"capital and culture . . . are our opponents." 

It will be interesting when the present war 
comes to an end, and the question arises, as it 
probably must arise, of the readjustment of the 
political relations of these provinces, to compare 



X Foreword 

the statements made forty odd years back by the 
German historian in regard to the national sym- 
pathies and the interests of the people. It is 
those sympathies and interests which will find 
expression if opportunity be given for a plebis- 
cite in which Alsace and Lorraine will decide be- 
tween the Republic on the west and the Empire to 
the east. 

An essay, written a few years later, bears the 
title The Claims of Prussia, It is an eloquent and 
forcible argument to show that the power of 
Germany can be consolidated and the place of 
Germany in the world can be safely secured only 
by giving to Prussia not merely a primacy and a 
leadership, but a substantially absolute control of 
the men and resources of the new Empire. 

A further essay gives an informing analysis of 
the organization of the Empire. In this paper the 
historian develops his theory for the overlordship 
of Prussia, which, as he contends, can be exercised 
under forms that carefully safeguard the legiti- 
mate self-respect of the princes and the people. 
He points out that ''the German state has been 
reconducted into the channels of the old Imperial 
law ; — all that was just and wise in the institutions 
of the Holy Empire is revived in the new forms.'* 

Treitschke makes the interesting suggestion 
that "in the great crisis of national life, war is 
always a milder remedy than revolution, for it 
safeguards fidelity, and its issues appear as a 
judgment of God." 



Foreword xi 

The constitution of the Empire does not fully 
meet his desire for a concentrated control. He 
writes : 

The Bundesrath (primarily destined to safeguard 
the territorial interests) gives a firm and single-handed 
control to the Imperial policy; the Reichstag, on the 
other hand, which represents the united nation, has 
almost invariably exercised an obstructive and dis- 
turbing influence. 

The Bundesrath is an Imperial Council made up 
of representatives of the States, and corresponds 
roughly to the American Senate; while the Reich- 
stag, elected by the people (voting under certain 
restrictions), may be compared (although the 
comparison would in many ways not be precise) 
w^th our House of Representatives. 

Treitschke takes the ground that 

Prussia alone has remained a true state. . . . The 
entire Imperial policy reposes upon that tacit assump- 
tion that there cannot possibly exist a permanent 
conflict between the will of the Empire and the will of 
the Prussian State. ... In all matters of decisive 
importance, Prussia has the determining voice. 

In his analysis of the Constitution of the new 
Federal Empire, Treitschke finds occasion for 
references to Switzerland and to the United 
States. He points out that 

like the States of the American Union and like the 
Swiss Cantons, the individual German States have lost 



xii Foreword 

their sovereignty, and from the strictly scientific 
standpoint can no longer be regarded as States, for 
they lack the two rights upon which the idea of sov- 
ereignty has been grounded — the right to take up 
arms and the power to determine the extent of their 
own prerogative. . . . The language of the Constitu- 
tion as well as the language of common life speaks of 
the States of the German Confederation and of the 
States of the American Republic, but the name is 
nominal. 

If the term "States" is at all applicable, they 
must be called ''non-sovereign States," but 
Treitschke believes there is properly no such thing. 
He makes the distinction, therefore, between a 
Federal State, in which the sovereignty of the 
individual States disappears, and a Confederation 
of States, in which the individual sovereignty 
has been retained. 

A biographical study of Gustavus Adolphus 
belongs to the same period. Treitschke admits 
the great indebtedness of Protestant Germany 
to the "Lion of the North-Land." "Gustavus 
Adolphus," he says, "does not belong to a single 
nation, but to the whole of Protestant Christen- 
dom." 

In the essay on Turkey and the Great Nations^ 
which bears date 1876 (the time of the Russo- 
Turkish War), Treitschke takes the ground that 
"Turkey is not needed in Europe." He is in- 
dignant with the "EngHsh stock speeches against 
Muscovite selfishness." He approves of the 



Foreword xiii 

pressure of the Russian power to the south-east, 
and points out that in territories that have been 
overcome, "the Russians are not meeting, Hke the 
Britons, in the East Indies, a very ancient civiHza- 
tion, equal in birth, but naked barbarism." They 
appear as the heralds of a superior civilization, 
and yet, notwithstanding the fact, they are not 
unapproachably alien to the conquered by descent 
and morality. 

Treitschke prophesies that 



no European State, least of all Germany, can tolerate 
a permanent Russian settlement in Stamboul, if 
only because of the feverish excitement which v/ould 
be bound to flame through all Slav races at such a 
movement; and how is it thinkable that they could 
maintain themselves on the Bosphorus if a German 
army entered Poland, the troops of Austria marched 
through the Balkans, and an English fleet lay before 
Seraglio Point? [He goes on to say, however, that] 
it is impossible to forbid a mighty Empire to sail 
with its warships the sea that is before its coast and 
it [the closing of the Black Sea] is as immoral as was 
formerly the treaty for the closing of the Scheldt. . . . 
Even the collapse of Osman rule in Stamboul cannot 
fill us with blind fright if we calmly weigh the rela- 
tions of the Powers to-day. . . . But there is no reason 
that the destruction of the Osman State must needs 
level the path for the world-Empire of Russia. . . . 
English statesmen wobble between obsolete prejudices 
and anxious cares ; self-interest and a feeling of inward 
elective affinity make them seem to the Turks their 



xiv Foreword 

only true friends. . . . We seek in vain for a creative 
idea in the Tory Government of Great Britain. 

He dreads lest trouble in the Balkans *' might 
endanger the existence of Austria and that would 
be a blow at our own Empire." He closes with 
the words : 

In the Eastern Question, Russia needs us more than 
we her; and therefore an astute, strong German policy 
has nothing to fear from Russian alliance. 

Treitschke writes as one speaking with au- 
thority. It seems evident from the present de- 
velopment of German policy and from the course 
of her history that Treitschke 's ideas have had a 
larger influence upon German thought and in 
shaping the work of German statesmen than had 
been fully realized during the lifetime of the 
historian. No student of the history of Germany 
during the second half of the nineteenth century 
and the opening years of the twentieth century 
can afford to neglect the writings of this original 
and forcible historian. 

G. H. P. 

New York, January, 191 5. 



CONTENTS 



TURKEY AND THE GREAT NATIONS 
GERMANY AND THE ORIENTAL QUEST 



ON 



WHAT WE DEMAND FROM FRANCE 
I. WHAT WE DEMAND 
II. ALSACE AND LORRAINE PAST AND 
PRESENT 
III. THE CLAIMS OF PRUSSIA 

THE INCORPORATION OF ALSACE-LORRAINE 
AS AN IMPERIAL PROVINCE IN THE 
GERMAN EMPIRE ..... 

IN MEMORY OF THE GREAT WAR . 
LUTHER AND THE GERMAN NATION 

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS AND GERMANY'S 
FREEDOM 

OUR EMPIRE 

INDEX . . . . 



75 

96 

98 

114 

158 



180 
200 
227 

261 
287 
329 



XV 



Germany, France, Russia, 
and Islam 



TURKEY AND THE GREAT NATIONS 

BERLIN, 

20th June, 1876. 

WHEN our posterity shall, sometime or other, 
cast their thoughts back to the present age, 
perhaps they may enviously inquire how we old 
people had deserved to live in this wonderfully 
fertile period. The sixteenth century has always 
up till now been regarded as the most intellectual 
and fruitful epoch of the Christian era; but the 
century beginning with the year 1789 is hardly 
inferior in creative power, and certainly far more 
fortunate in the moulding and completion of 
things. All the great ideas, which could be fore- 
seen but not realized in Martin Luther's age, the 
freedom of faith, of thought, and of economic 
production, have become Europe's assured posses- 
sion during the latest three generations. It is 



2 Turkey and the Great Nations 

the present time which is fulfilling Columbus*s 
work, and may seriously speak of a world-history. 
The dreams of the Huttens and Machiavellis, 
the unity of Germany and Italy, are actually 
embodied before our eyes. And scarcely has 
Luther's Antichrist lost the hegemony of the 
world than doom begins to impend over his 
Turkish Antichrist. There are almost too many 
historical changes for one single generation, and 
who can blame us Germans if the disorders on the 
Bosphorus appear to us thoroughly unwelcome? 
We need assured peace, like bread, in order that 
our decayed economical conditions may recover. 
We do not lose sight of the way in which these 
Eastern affairs may be used as a lever to help us in 
our next task in the perfecting of German unity. 
And although we think Turkey's riile more than 
ripe for destruction, the Rayahs are by no means 
yet ripe for independence, and we should wel- 
come it as a piece of luck if this most difficult of 
all European questions, which innumerable half- 
successful wars and rebellions and a deluge of 
dispatches and books have only rendered more 
obscure and enigmatic, remained unsolved for 
yet a few decades. 

But fate cares not for our wishes. Whether 
we like it or not, we must finally admit that the idea 
of nationality, which has already newly moulded 
the centre of this hemisphere, has also awakened 
vividly in the Graeco-Slav world. It would be 
contrary to history if this impelling force of the 



Turkey and the Great Nations 3 

century were reverentially to spare Europe's 
most miserable State. The new explosion of 
the Eastern crisis luckily finds us in a tolerably 
favourable diplomatic position. The alliance of 
the three Eastern Powers has already proved itself 
a power for peace and moderation. That alliance 
alone makes possible what would have been 
unthinkable a decade ago: that the rights of the 
fortunate Rayahs can be to some degree assured 
by agreement between the Great Powers, and 
the inevitable fall of Turkey very considerably 
hastened, perhaps without a European war. The 
alliance of the three Emperors affords us at any 
rate the certainty that Germany's word shall weigh 
heavily in the scale when matters come to be 
decided in the East. The German Empire's 
friendship is altogether invaluable to the Peters- 
burg Court at the present moment. The path 
to the vulnerable points of the Czar's Empire 
passes solely through German territory; the 
Russian Power, allied with Germany, can be 
beaten but not seriously injured, as the Crimean 
War indubitably showed. Is it probable that the 
strong hands which guide German politics do not 
appreciate so advantageous a situation, or that 
the clever statesmen on the Neva should wilfully 
fling away by foolish schemes of conquest the al- 
liance of a tried friend, who has no selfish aims 
whatever to pursue in the Orient? 

And as our State is entering more resolutely 
and powerfully than formerly into the fresh 



4 Turkey and the Great Nations 

Eastern crisis, public opinion has become quieter 
and soberer. The Turkish scimitar has long lost 
its terrors; no longer do the Turkish bells ring 
which used to warn even our grandfathers of 
the unexpiated guilt of Christianity. We smile at 
the phil-Hellenic enthusiasm of the twenties, and 
no Emperor Joseph to-day will wish "to avenge 
insulted humanity on these barbarians." We 
also hear no more of those ardent eulogies of the 
freedom and culture of the noble Osmanic nation, 
with which the Press of the Western Powers 
enriched astonished Europe, and the not less 
astonished Turks at the time of the Crimean War. 
Since the Salonica massacres, since the Sultan's 
wonderful suicide, and the not less wonderful 
revenge on the Circassians, even the most good- 
natured German bourgeois considers the conditions 
in David Urquhart's model State "remarkable 
but disgusting," to use the Schleswig-Holstein 
phrase. 

Even in bygone years there has never been an 
entire lack of thoughtful critics of Oriental things 
in Germany; Moltke's two standard books, which 
are far too little known, together with the writings 
of Roepell and Eichmann, are indeed the best and 
most profound things that have been written 
anywhere about modem Turkey. But the major- 
ity of our people are now, for the first time, 
in a position to consider these remote affairs 
impartially; because during each of the previous 
crises in the Turkish Empire our attention was 



Turkey and the Great Nations 5 

taken up by anxieties which touched us more 
nearly. The Crimean War was waged not merely 
for the Turk's sake, but also in order to abolish the 
unnatural domination maintained by the Emperor 
Nicholas in Europe. The Czar's arrogance and 
domineeringness lay on no country so heavily as 
on Germany; he was the mighty support of the 
Diet, of reaction, and of provincialism. German 
Liberals were at that period driven into the camp 
of the Western Powers by the anger of insulted 
national pride. Owing to passionate hatred of 
the Czar, which, as things stood, was thoroughly 
justified, the question could hardly arise whether 
the wise doctors in Paris and London had any 
practical cure for their "Sick Man." Bunsen, 
obsessed by such feelings, actually devised the 
scheme of tearing the whole northern coast of the 
Black Sea from Russia, and giving it to Austria. 
A statesman even of the insight and sobriety of 
Freiherr von Stockmar toyed with the fantastic 
notion of the restoration of Poland. All the old 
Polish-French fairy tales about Russia found 
ready belief among the public; Peter the Great's 
notorious will, one of the most barefaced forgeries 
ever attempted, circulated again through Europe ; 
and again, just as at the time of the July Revolu- 
tion, Liberal Society poured forth laudation of 
the enlightened Western Powers. How different 
is our attitude to-day! Nobody is any longer 
deceived about France's European policy, and a 
profound change has also occurred in current 



6 Turkey and the Great Nations 

criticisms of England, which redounds to the 
honour of the developing capacity of German 
Liberalism. 

What German Liberal has not in his young days 
dreamt the glorious dream of the natural alliance 
of free England with free Germany? We needed 
a long series of painful experiences before we at 
last learnt that the foreign politics of States 
are not determined solely, or even mainly, by the 
inner relations of their constitutions. However 
highly you may think of British liberty, modern 
England is undoubtedly a reactionary force in the 
society of nations. Her position as a Power is an 
obvious anachronism. It was created in those good 
old times when wars were still decided by sea-fights 
and hired mercenaries, and it was thought politic 
in all dominating countries to seize piratical hold 
of well-situated sea-fortresses and fleet-stations, 
without any regard to nature and history. In a 
century of national States and big national armies 
such a cosmopolitan commercial Power can no 
longer continue to endure ; the time will and must 
come when Gibraltar will belong to the Spaniards, 
Malta to the Italians, Heligoland to the Germans, 
and the Mediterranean to the peoples of the 
Mediterranean countries. 

It is saying too much to compare modern 
England with eighteenth century Holland; the 
nation still exhibits powerful energy in the splendid 
achievement of its social life, and it might easily 
happen again that, should she believe herself 



Turkey and the Great Nations 7 

imperilled in her vital commercial interests, she 
would yet stagger humanity by bold determination. 
The vision of her statesmen, however, is quite as 
narrow, her view of the world has become just as 
patriarchally limited and obstinately conservative, 
as were once the politics of the decaying Nether- 
lands. Over-rich and over-satiated, vulnerable 
at a hundred points of their far-flung possessions, 
the Britons feel they have nothing more to desire 
in the wide world, and can only oppose the young 
forces of the century by the forcible methods of an 
obsolete age; they therefore obstinately resist all 
changes in the Society of States, however bene- 
ficial they may be. England is to-day the shame- 
less champion of barbarism in international law. 
It is her fault that warfare by sea still bears the 
character of privileged robbery — to the disgrace of 
mankind. At the Brussels Conference her opposi- 
tion nullified the attempt of Germany and Russia 
to set some limit to the excesses of war by land. 
Apart from the feeble and entirely unhelpful 
sympathy displayed by the English Press in 
regard to Italian unity, the British nation during 
the last two decades has simply shown bitter 
enmity to every single new and hopeful Power 
which has arisen in the world. She enthused for 
the brutality of North American slave-holders; 
she was the clamorous, but, God be thanked, 
cowardly supporter of foreign Danish domination 
in Schleswig-Holstein ; she reverenced the Diet and 
the Guelph Empire; she allowed the French to 



8 Turkey and the Great Nations 

attack united Germany, which she could have 
prevented, and prolonged the war by her sales of 
weapons. When M. de Lesseps conceived the 
brilliant idea of the Suez Canal, which the ruler 
of the East Indies ought to have seized with both 
hands, the Britons stuck their heads into the sand 
like the ostrich in order not to perceive the bless- 
ings of the necessity, which was inconvenient just 
at the first moment; they jeered and jibed until 
the great enterprise was accomplished, and then 
endeavoured to exploit for England's advantage 
the innovation which had been achieved against 
England's will. And after all these cumulative 
proofs of the incompetence and narrow-minded 
prejudice of British statesmanship, ought we 
Germans to admire that State as the magnani- 
mous defender of national freedom and of the 
European balance of power? It is easy to hear 
in the boastful words in which England loves to 
veil her Eastern policy the echo of the anxious 
cry of old: We are defending the Ganges at the 
Bosphorus. 

Every London newspaper proves that nobody 
there has any suspicion of the enormous alteration 
in all Russian conditions. They still speak as in 
the days of the Czar Nicholas. The Emperor 
Alexander, however, has not only opened new 
paths for the social Hfe of his people by profoundly 
radical reforms, but he has also given a quite 
altered tendency to the Empire's foreign policy. 
Only blind hatred can maintain that Russia is 



Turkey and the Great Nations 9 

even to-day oppressing Europe with a crippling dom- 
ination. The Petersburg Government has proved 
in North America, Italy, and Germany, as well as 
in the struggle against Rome, that it knows how to 
respect the Hving forces of the century ; after so 
many proofs of its shrewdness and love of peace it 
can at least expect that we should judge its Oriental 
schemes according to the facts, not according to 
the sensational stories of EngHsh Russophobes. 

Taken all in all, the great Slavonic Power has 
been the best ally Germany has ever had, and in 
the face of that fact the question becomes urgent 
whether it is really impossible for Germans and 
Slavs to dwell in peace side by side. If our broad- 
minded cosmopolitanism cherishes odious preju- 
dices against any nation, it is certainly the Slavonic. 
We have often fought against the Romanic 
peoples, and sometimes felt in the heat of the fight 
a quick outburst of national hatred; but the 
near blood-kinship which unites all the peoples 
that were affected by the migration of nations, 
the common participation in classical education, 
and the gratitude for so many gifts brought to us 
by the older civilization of the West, always led 
again after a brief estrangement to a good under- 
standing. Hatred of the Slavs, on the other hand, 
is deep in our blood, and it is also heartily recipro- 
cated on the other side. For centuries we have 
dealt with the nations of the East only as enemies, 
as rulers, or as teachers; even to-day we still ex- 
hibit to them all the harsh and domineering traits 



lo Turkey and the Great Nations 

of our character. Glad of our older civilization, 
we glance beyond the Vistula and the Danube 
with feelings such as the Roman had when he gazed 
at the right bank of the Rhine, and we do not even 
take the trouble to learn the Russian tongue — 
which, by the way, is by no means an unimportant 
phenomenon, because the educated Russian, by 
his knowledge of languages, is gaining almost 
exactly the same superiority over us which we 
had over the French. To tell the truth, the Slav 
seems to us a born slave. As soon as our conver- 
sation turns to the interesting nationalities south 
of the Danube, a German cannot help uttering 
the winged words, "Swineherds and nose-muti- 
lators" — as if our ancestors in the olden times did 
not also live with the proboscidians in cordial 
intimacy, and carry on wars in which little 
humane feeling was shown ! Should such arrogant 
prejudices continue? It is not to be imagined 
that we should ever feel for the unripe peoples 
of the Balkan Peninsula so deep a sympathy as we 
once did for the movement towards Italian unity. 
But they are after all our Christian brothers; 
the combat they are waging is after all only a 
scene out of the ancient war between Cross and 
Crescent. It surely does not become us, who 
have only just shaken foreign domination from our 
necks by a bloody fight, to put the question 
with arrogant callousness whether an existence 
worthy of a man is possible under the yoke of the 
foreign domination of the Turk. 



Turkey and the Great Nations ii 

For fifteen hundred years the most beautiful 
country in Europe has been in the possession of 
two great empires which, although both of them 
were quite unintellectual, maintained themselves 
solely by the perfect technique of their governance, 
by their skill in mastering and utilizing men; 
a well-developed monetary economy and system- 
atized finances, good soldiers, and a technically 
well-schooled officialdom; lastly a policy without 
ideas, which nevertheless knew how to inspire 
all its subjects with a strenuously servile dis- 
position — those were the means to which the aged 
Byzantine Empire owed its thousand years' du- 
ration, whilst all around the youthfully vigorous 
States of the Germans weakly collapsed. And 
the successors of the Byzantines, the Osmans, 
have similarly maintained their power solely by 
their skill in ruling, not by any moral idea. Supe- 
rior to the Western countries through their stand- 
ing armies, to the Orientals by the strict order of 
succession in the House of Osman, they subjugated 
almost the whole of Alexander's dominions to the 
Crescent; and nobody can regard without ad- 
miration the ruling ability of those powerful first 
Sultans, Murad and Mohammed, how they fast- 
ened the new yoke so tightly and firmly on the 
necks of the Rayahs, who had been trampled down 
and unmanned by Byzantine, Venetian, and Geno- 
ese governors, that a resurrection from the bottom- 
less deep of their slavery seemed for a long time 
quite unthinkable to the subject peoples. 



12 Turkey and the Great Nations 

Their government, like almost all governments 
in the Orient, was a theocracy, the Koran the 
unchangeable statute-book both in political and 
religious life. High above the whole Empire was 
enthroned the Sultan, girt with Osman's sword, 
the Shadow of God on earth, bound to nothing 
but the word of the Prophet. Under him were his 
tools, the great officials, who mostly came out of 
the ranks of the Christian renegades during the 
brilliant period of the Osman State, and the hordes 
of the Janissaries, all children of Christians, who 
had been robbed from their parents at a tender age 
and then inspired by a Spartan education with the 
whole ferocity of the Islamic faith. Under them 
were the ruling people of True Believers. Lastly 
under those were the polyglot herd of Christians, 
"pigs with similar bristles, dogs with similar 
tails," condemned to drudge and pay taxes, to 
purchase their exhausted lives anew every year 
by means of the poll-tax, the haraj, to strengthen 
ever anew the army of the ruling race by the toll 
of their boys — if sometimes it was not preferred to 
put them themselves among the troops of the 
Arabs, in which they were then used as cannon- 
fodder or were even thrown in heaps into the 
trenches of besieged Christian fortresses, as a living 
bridge for Allah's storming fighters. Thus were 
the Rayahs forced to forge ever closer the fetters 
of their slavery with their own hands. 

Skill in enslavement had here produced an in- 
comparable masterpiece which is only explicable 



Turkey and the Great Nations 13 

by the servility of the subjects of Byzantium, and 
by the ancient traditions of Oriental policy; for 
since Asia Minor knew of no national States, but 
only a powerfully welded medley of national 
wrecks, the capacity for ruling by dividing de- 
veloped here to a degree of virtuosity almost incom- 
prehensible to a Westerner. Whilst Christendom 
burnt its heretics, everybody under the Crescent 
might live according to his Faith ; and only a short 
time ago Lord Shaftesbury quite seriously asserted 
amid the applause of the enlightened House of 
Lords that Turkey had done more for Christendom 
in a decade than Russia in nine centuries! This 
much-vaunted tolerance of the Turks also proves 
as a fact merely how skilfully the system of en- 
slavement was devised; they did not desire the 
conversion of the subject races, because the 
Mussulman could put his foot on their necks only 
if the Rayahs remained unbelieving dogs. Whilst 
everywhere in Europe a strict class-distinction kept 
the lower orders under, the meanest slave at the 
Bosphorus might hope to rise to the highest 
offices in the Empire by luck and energy ; therefore 
in the seventeenth century the toil-worn peasants 
of Central Europe sometimes welcomed the 
Prophet's approaching standard with similar 
feelings as they did later the armies of the French 
Revolution. However, that complete social 
equality, which constitutes everywhere the foot- 
stool of Oriental despotism, existed actually only 
for the ruling race of the Believers. Between 



1 4 Turkey and the Great Nations 

them and the Rayahs stretched a boundless gulf; 
the extremest insolence of the old French aristo- 
cratic arrogance is not within even measurable 
distance of those feehngs of cold contempt and 
bodily disgust which the believing Turk ex- 
periences even to-day against the pork-eating 
Giaour. 

The conqueror found himself in the presence 
of a population utterly divided by raving race- 
hatred and gloomy religious passions. The Greek 
hated the Serb more fiercely than the Turk, and 
yet more shocking than the sight of the man 
turning his face towards Mecca in prayer was 
it for an Orthodox son of the Eastern Church to 
behold an altar of the Latins, where the Saviour 
hangs on the Cross with His feet nailed one above 
the other, instead of side by side. Such a dis- 
position among the Rayahs afforded firm ground 
for that shrewd system of keeping the races and 
creeds apart to which the ruling minority owed 
its security. As the government of the ruling 
race was itself theocratic, the elders of every 
Christian Church were provided with jurisdiction 
and powers of police over those of their faith, and 
were at the same time obliged to take responsibility 
for the taxes of the Rayahs. The Orthodox formed 
a Greek subordinate State within the Turkish 
Empire under their Patriarch. Their bishops dealt 
as they pleased with the popes and congregations, 
but seldom disturbed by a wildly energetic pasha ; 
they boasted that, compared with their social 



Turkey and the Great Nations 15 

equals in other lands, "You are only parsons, we 
are pashas!" That is what English worshippers 
of the Turk praise as the incomparable self- 
government of the Osmans! The Rayahs* venal 
servility next became itself responsible for the 
fact that whilst the high clergy fleeced their 
flocks thoroughly well, they never became dan- 
gerous to the Turkish lords. What a horrible 
page of Christian history is covered by the fates 
of the Patriarchs of Constantinople ! The dignity 
lasted for life, and could be forfeited only for high 
treason or on appeal of the Orthodox themselves. 
And yet this well-assured office, which might have 
been a prop of national independence for the 
Greeks, became a useful tool of enslavement for 
the Turks. Since time immemorial no Patriarch 
has kept his seat longer than three years. The 
spirit of simony penetrated the whole Church; 
scarcely had a prince of the Church won the votes 
of his fellow-believers by bribery, than others 
started working against him with the same method, 
till he was at last accused before the Porte and 
deposed. And the same unworthy game kept 
going on for centuries ! To crown all, the big 
merchants of the Fanar carried on the monetary 
transactions of the Porte, and the commerce of 
the Christians was preferred before that of the 
Turks because it had to pay higher taxes, just as 
the fiscal policy of the landowners in our Middle 
Age sometimes patronized Jewish usury. Thus 
the shameful name of Rayah became a literal, 



1 6 Turkey and the Great Nations 

fearful truth. So long as they did not "gnaw at 
the collar of subjection," they might settle their 
disputes among themselves, just as stupid cattle 
are left to themselves; but as soon as they became 
engaged in quarrel with a Mussulman they were 
made to feel that the word of the Prophet formally 
gives the True Believer the right to tread the 
Giaour underfoot. The complete absence of rights 
on the part of the Rayahs was only made endur- 
able to some extent by the fact that each com- 
munity and each urban quarter was usually 
inhabited solely by fellow-believers, and so dis- 
putes between Christians and Moslems were not 
too frequent. 

The same unparalleled ignorance which ensured 
the mastery of the Rayahs by the Moslems, also 
inspired their foreign policy. Never, not even 
when they watered their horses in the Leitha 
and beheld the rich abodes of German culture 
at their feet, did any idea of the superiority of 
Western civilization enter the Osmans' heads. 
The Frank was and is regarded by them as the 
paragon of frivolous stupidity ; to make the Prank- 
ish bear dance a fool's dance at a rope's end was 
and is the finest spice of existence for the worthy 
Eff endis of the Seraglio. Yet with what clarity and 
assurance did the one-sided narrow-mindedness 
of Oriental fanaticism meet the disharmony of 
the divided European world! The Mussulman 
knew but two kingdoms on earth, the House 
of Islam and the House of War; "the whole of 



Turkey and the Great Nations 17 

heathendom is only a nation," to conquer which 
was the immutable duty of the Moslems. The 
Western countries meanwhile became defenceless 
against the barbarians through the rich mani- 
f oldness of their culture ; the want of unity among 
the European Powers, the superabundance of 
contradictions which is included in our portion 
of the world, were the best allies of the Osmans, 
beginning from the day when the Genoese calmly 
looked on at the conquest of Byzantium from 
the ramparts of Galata, up to the contemporary 
Christian heroisms of Benjamin Disraeli. And 
again, from the Council of Mantua, when res 
orientales were first put among the orders of the 
day for European diplomats, down to the war 
of dispatches in our own days, the unity of Europe 
has ever been nullified by the particular impedi- 
ment that whilst, if needful, some understanding 
could have been reached about everything else, 
it was impossible in the case of the mighty capital, 
which signifies more than the whole of the Balkan 
Peninsula. It was not feasible to find a way out 
with the superficial advice of banishing the Turks 
from Europe, for the simple reason that their 
ruling stronghold itself half belongs to Asia. The 
Bosphorus is the high street of Constantinople; 
the Asiatic suburb of Scutari is hardly farther from 
Stamboul than the European suburbs of Pera and 
Galata. On the Asiatic shore at Anadoli Fanar lie 
the ruins of the Temple of Gerokoi, w^here the 
Hellenic sailor used once to say good-bye to his 



1 8 Turkey and the Great Nations 

beloved home before he began his voyage to the 
barbarian countries on the Bosphorus. So far 
as the history of that region goes, the south-east 
coast of Europe and the north-west coast of 
Asia have always belonged to the same Greek 
civilization. It was and is an enigma how a new 
Power could ever arise in Stamboul which should 
not at the same time be master of the most valu- 
able strip of Asia Minor. 

It is astounding with what cleverness the 
Osmans in their great period knew how to utilize 
this favourable position and those dissensions in 
Europe. Although they had only the vaguest 
conception of the geographical positions and the 
history of the heathen countries, they yet divined, 
with the fine sense for power peculiar to Orientals, 
where in each case they had to look for their allies. 
Correct insight and diplomatic tact, those ancient 
privileges of masterful aristocracies, were also a 
heritage among the ruling race in the Balkan 
Peninsula. As the behever in the Koran may 
regard every treaty of peace with the heathen 
merely as a revocable armistice, the Porte dealt 
with the Western countries with imperturbable 
calm. She understood how to expect everything 
from time, and waited patiently, with the fatalistic 
quietness of the Moslem, until the hour came to 
tear up all treaties and to let loose against the 
Giaours the still unbroken, fierce natural forces 
of the Janissaries and Spahis. Since France first 
drew the great Suleiman into the quarrels of 



Turkey and the Great Nations 19 

Christendom, the Turks began to perceive that 
they were at least welcome to one of the Christian 
Powers; and thenceforth the State of the Osmans 
has so often and so unctuously been praised by 
the wiseacre statesmen of the Western countries 
as an indispensable weight in the scales of Euro- 
pean balance, that we ought not to be surprised if 
to-day all the supports of the Turkish Empire, 
the valis, mullahs, and ulemas, the black and the 
white eunuchs, the odalisques, and the seraglio 
boys, are all penetrated by the glad belief that 
Allah's wonderful mercifulness has struck the 
stupid Franks' eyes with an incurable blindness. 
With good reason in truth has Machiavelli 
eulogized the proud beginnings of the Osman 
State; because that which represented policy 
to the Florentine, namely, skill in governing, in 
maintaining and enhancing the power of the State, 
was practised here with a rare cleverness. But 
with this skill the Turks' political capacity has 
always ended; their Empire, even at its great 
period, lacked all moral substance, just like 
Machiavelli's ideal State. Might was self-interest ; 
the question as to what moral purposes it should 
aim at was never put. It was thought a matter 
of course that the State should exist for the 
benefit of the rulers; and if we inquire what the 
ruling skill of that long series of strong statesmen 
and generals has brought forth for the well-being 
and civilization of mankind, only one answer is 
possible : Nothing, simply nothing. When the con- 



20 Turkey and the Great Nations 

quering Mohammed bestrode the desert palace of 
the Comneni, the feeling of the transitoriness of 
earthly greatness overcame him, and he uttered 
the verse of the Oriental poet : 

Before the gates in Emperors* castles 

The spider, as chamberlain, is weaving curtains, 

And in Afrasiab's columned halls 

Echoes the cry of the nesting owl. 

He did not imagine he was predicting the fate 
of his own Empire. Like a huge avalanche, 
Turkish despotism fell upon those blessed lands 
which once witnessed the classic age of Christian 
Church history. The interior of the Peninsula is 
to-day as Httle known as the deserts of Australia ; 
it was not till Diebitsch's expedition to Adrianople 
that science gained some sort of notion of the 
formation of Balkan mountain ranges. The rise 
of the Turkish power compelled the Western 
countries to brace themselves to vigorous action. 
As the Osman occupied the flower of the com- 
mercial centres in the Mediterranean, the Euro- 
pean sought the sea route to India. In the fight 
with the Asiatics arose the new Austria, which dis- 
covered a firm bond of unity for its polyglot 
nations in the fighting renown they had won 
together. In so far even the Osman Empire has 
borne witness to the truth that every great his- 
torical phenomenon leaves some positive result 
in the course of human development. But where 
are the traces of the civilizing work of the 



Turkey and the Great Nations 21 

Turks themselves? What remained in Hungary 
after the long one hundred and fifty years 
during which the Pashas dwelt on the Koenigs- 
burg at Buda? A few crude mutilations of 
beautiful Christian churches and the warm baths 
of Ofen. What now reminds one of the domina- 
tion of the Crescent in Greece? Hardly any- 
thing but the ruins of destroyed Christian 
habitations. The ruination of the system of gov- 
ernment did not consist in the brutal outrages of 
individual magnates — because the impaling and 
drowning in sacks, the violating and pillaging, and 
similar amusements customary to the country, did 
not, according to Oriental standard, happen too 
frequently — but in that indescribable intellectual 
laziness, in that profound slumber of the soul, 
which was always peculiar to the Osmans even in 
the days of their warlike greatness, and caused 
them to appear as barbarians even in the eyes of 
the Arabs. Just as the Turk truly loves only 
three vocations, the career of a soldier, an official, 
or a priest, his State has never shown any under- 
standing of art or science or commerce. His 
political economy, if the expression be allowed, 
simply pursued the purpose of assuring comfortable 
provision for the ruling race ; he therefore lightened 
the taxes on imports and increased those on 
exports — just as in the Spain of Philip H, which 
exhibits altogether several striking similarities to 
the State of the Crescent. 

And that idiotic system, which destroyed Spain's 



22 Turkey and the Great Nations 

Empire in a few decades, has been burdening the 
Balkan lands for nearly five hundred years ! The 
Osmans, even in the glory of their victories and 
in the superabundance of pillaged wealth, were 
an Asiatic cavalry horde which never became 
at home on the soil of Western civilization, and 
never got beyond the standpoint of nomadic 
warriors. A national migration which fell asleep 
encamped over the Christian peoples of the 
south-east. The Turkish Empire always re- 
mained a mighty foreign despotism to the Rayahs. 
The venal Fanariots might fawn for the favours 
of the Osmanli, and the petty chieftains of the 
Bosniaks, abjuring their fathers' faith, might join 
the ruling nation's plundering campaign; but the 
masses of the Southern Slavs have for five hundred 
years been bewailing, in innumerable songs and 
tales, the battle on the field of the Amsel as the 
fatal day for the ancient freedom; the masses of 
the Greeks have never ceased imploring God's 
vengeance for that day of shame when the con- 
queror rode into the Hagia Sophia and his horse's 
hoofs violated the most beautiful God's house in 
Eastern Christendom. Likewise, the conscience of 
the European world has never recognized the ex- 
istence of the Turkish realm as a morally justified 
necessity. The conscience of nations knows of no 
superannuation of what is wrong. War and con- 
quest are only means towards the right ; they can 
only prove that the victor possesses the mcral 
superiority whereon the right to rule is based, but 



Turkey and the Great Nations 23 

they alone cannot base a right to rule on physical 
domination. As long as the victor has not proved 
that his power is countenanced by the moral 
forces of history, his success remains an injustice 
which may be expiated, an actuality which may 
be abolished by other actualities. Dense weeds 
have long been growing over the countless deeds of 
violence which were needful for the foundation of 
the governmental unity of all Europe's great 
nations. The wrong done during the agitations 
for unity among the Germans and Italians is nowa- 
days, after but a few years, hardly felt, because 
the nations' sense of right says to itself that those 
revolutions only buried the dead and exalted the 
living. But those wounds which a mentally sterile 
Asiatic horde inflicted on Christian civilization still 
bleed after five hundred years as if the blows had 
fallen yesterday. And they will never scar over 
so long as Europe still possesses free and cour- 
ageous men who, unmoved by Russophobia and 
English cant, dare to call the historic unrighteous- 
ness by its true name; and however much self- 
complacent narrow-heartedness may mock, it has 
finally ever been idealism which has divined the 
tendency of history. 

But, however firmly and securely all the institu- 
tions of the old Turkish Empire fitted together, 
the State lacked what has been lacking in all theo- 
cracies, capability of development. Its might 
rested on the Osmans' governing skill and the 
Rayahs' servility. If one of those two supports 



24 Turkey and the Great Nations 

began to waver, inevitable decay would threaten 
the State, and the natural progress of European 
culture soon threaten both at the same time. A 
powerful movement of economic and intellectual 
life, in which Turkey took no part, gradually 
strengthened the military and political forces of 
the neighbouring Christian States to such a degree 
that the balance of power was entirely displaced. 
The Crescent lost the rich provinces on the other 
side of the Danube by humiliating defeats, whilst 
the Western countries regained full consciousness 
of their superiority. The Osman Empire dropped 
to a second-rate Power, and the name of Turk, 
instead of being a bogey for children, became their 
butt. The age of the Revolution next woke up 
even the Rayah nations. Since then the decline 
of the ruling people has been slowly and steadily 
accomplishing itself, like the operation of na- 
tural laws, whilst the national masses have con- 
tinually grown in development. The strengthening 
self -consciousness, and the increasing well-being 
of the Rayahs, daily widen the gulf between the 
rulers and subjects, and make reconciliation and 
assimilation quite unthinkable. The Osmanli 
are decaying, body and soul. Their generative 
strength is being extinguished in the sodomy and 
voluptuousness of the harem. Of the great 
features of the national character almost nothing 
remains but pride, fatalistic confidence, and inca- 
pacity for any sympathy ; only now and then do the 
bravery and the clever ruling sense of better days 



Turkey and the Great Nations 25 

break through the thick veil of measureless idleness 
which has pitched its camp on the souls of the 
satiated masters. 

Orderliness and resolute manliness likewise 
vanished with the might of the Empire; the wild 
greed for plunder, which under the great Sultans of 
old dared to satisfy itself only on the Rayahs, has 
now for a long time done so shamelessly on the 
State itself: "The Padishah's treasure is a sea, 
and he who does not draw from it is a pig. " The 
Rayahs, on the other hand, are indebted to Christen- 
dom for the still tolerable purity of their domestic 
life, and therewith their reproductiveness, which is 
generally decisive in such racial struggles. What 
really lives and works in Turkey is Christian. 
Since the peace of Kutchuk-Kainarji the Greeks 
have almost monopolized the traffic of the ^gean 
Sea ; their wealth is growing, not only in the har- 
bours of their small kingdom, in Patras, and at 
Syra, but they are also multiplying and flour- 
ishing in the coastal towns of Asia Minor, in 
Smyrna, Aivalu, and Pergamos, whilst the Turks 
are growing poorer and vanishing. It is true 
the Rumanian and the Southern Slav are many 
miles from being able to compete with the 
activity of the exceedingly astute Greek, but 
they also are far more energetic than the Turk. 
The Osmans themselves admit that "by Allah's 
will the Giaours become rich, and we poor"; the 
gloomy prediction of the ultimate triumph of the 
Cross lives in their nation, and many a distinguished 



26 Turkey and the Great Nations 

Turk prudently orders his grave on safe Asiatic 
soil. Sooner or later, in this instance as in that of 
Poland's aristocratic Republic, the historical law 
shall be fulfilled, which enjoins on our toiling 
century that there is no longer a place in Europe 
for a race of horsemen and consumers of income. 
Let us not be led astray by the darling assurance 
of English tourists that the Turk is nevertheless 
the only gentleman among the inhabitants of the 
Peninsula. That he certainly is. He who would 
spend a pleasant hour with coffee and chibouk, will 
undoubtedly find himself more comfortable in the 
society of the dignified, distinguished, clean, and 
honourable Turks than among the greedy vulture- 
faces of the Rayahs. The truth is, the vices 
of masters are different from those of servants; 
dirt, servility, and thorough-going mendacity flour- 
ish only in a state of slavery. But can supe- 
riority in the social decencies be decisive in great 
historical struggles? The slave-lords of Virginia 
and Carolina assuredly displayed in casual inter- 
course pleasanter social manners than the hard- 
faced farmers and business men of the North, 
or even than the negroes. And yet the German 
people will always gladly remember that we did 
not, like the English, let ourselves be so seduced by 
a superficial preference for the gentlemen of the 
South as to defend an unworthy cause, but with 
moral earnestness we acknowledged the better 
right of the North. In like manner, the Turks' 
quiet dignity should not deceive us as to the fact 



Turkey and the Great Nations 27 

that the industry of the Greeks and the reproduc- 
tiveness of the Slavs are leaving effete Osmandom 
far behind in every respect. The Rayahs' Ortho- 
dox faith is certainly the immaturest of all forms 
of Christianity. He who judges merely by fleeting 
impressions of travel will probably assign a higher 
place to the Mohammedans' strict monotheism 
than to the picture-worship of many a crude 
Rayah tribe, which regard their crucifix almost in 
the same way as the negroes their fetiches; and if 
the tourist has also witnessed in the grave-church 
at Jerusalem the way in which the Turkish cavasses 
enforce peace with their sticks between the brawl- 
ing, raging adherents of the religion of love, he 
thinks himself justified in condemning the whole 
of Oriental Christendom. He who, on the other 
hand, surveys the concatenation of centuries, 
cannot but admit that even there in the East, as 
everywhere else, Christian civilization disposes of 
an endless power of rejuvenation and self -renewal, 
whilst all the peoples of Islam infallibly reach a 
point at last at which the word of the Koran is ful- 
filled. "Change is innovation, innovation is the 
path to hell. " Even the most intellectually gifted 
of all the Mohammedan nations, which founded the 
glorious State of the Ommiads and created the 
wonderful edifices of Granada and Cordova, 
suddenly stood still at a certain point in its path 
as if bewitched ; and this congelation of Islam gave 
the Spanish Christians the power and the right to 
conquer the Ommiads, although at the time of 



28 Turkey and the Great Nations 

the Cid they were even more inferior to the Moors 
than the Rayahs are to-day to the Osmans. 

The Turks, for their part, have already long gone 
past the zenith of the culture attainable by their 
capacities ; in the case of the Greeks, however, and 
even of the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Rumanians, 
only a biassed mind can dispute that they are no 
longer to-day what they were a century ago ; their 
strength, after a long, death-like slumber, is again 
unmistakably, if slowly, resurrecting. The in- 
crease among the Franks at the Bosphorus is also 
becoming a peril to the Osman Empire. Under 
the protection of their Ambassadors they form 
States within the State; besides how could it be 
possible to subject Europeans to Turkish juris- 
diction? Their privileged position shatters re- 
spect for the authorities, even as their practically 
almost complete freedom from taxation damages 
the State revenue; and compared with the seven- 
teen Embassies which attack the " Sick Man " with 
advice, threats, intrigues of every kind, the Sul- 
tan appears to his own subjects almost like an 
irresponsible person whom Europe has put 
under observation. 

With their strength, likewise grew the Rayahs' 
self-consciousness, which often seems wearisome 
to us Germans, and still oftener absurd, because 
national pride is generally wont to be the more 
bragging and boastful in inverse ratio to a nation's 
might and deeds. But we must not on that 
account misunderstand either the necessity of 



Turkey and the Great Nations 29 

this persistent national agitation, or its connection 
with the decisive forces of the century. Was it not 
altogether natural that the reawakening impulse 
towards culture should again hold the mother 
language in honour, the basis of all culture— that 
Bulgaria found her Karadzic, Greece her Rhigas 
and the long series of her national apostles; that 
the Serbs learnt to value their fine old national 
poetry, and that the great actions of their fathers, 
real and imaginary, were again eulogized every- 
where? You may believe as much as you please of 
Fallmerayer's brilliant hypotheses, which, in point 
of fact, only partially survive a strict scientific 
investigation, but the Neo-Greeks have absorbed 
the Slav and Skypetarian elements, which their 
nationality embraces, and filled them with Greek 
culture; a strong national self -consciousness has 
grown up in them as the result of hard struggles 
and the memories of an ancient past ; they possess 
living traditions, a civilized tongue, and a consider- 
able literature; in short, they are a small nation 
still extremely immature, but of indestructibly 
developed individuality. A paltry cunning it is, 
worthy of the demagogic judges of the late- 
lamented Bundestag, that would try to explain this 
persistent change in the popular life simply as 
arising from the machinations of Russian agents ! 
There certainly was, and is, no lack of such agents, 
although Liberal pessimists have garbled astound- 
ing stories even on that point. Why, how long 
is it since Bakunin was considered by the whole 



30 Turkey and the Great Nations 

Liberal world to be a Russian spy; and who will 
nowadays defend that idiotic supposition? The 
Russians' despotic methods of government and 
energetic patriotism brought it about that in 
former years almost every educated Russian 
communicated of his own free will or by command 
to the Government, the observations he had 
gathered together during his travels in Europe; 
that old custom has assuredly not become quite 
obsolete to-day. That Pan-Slavist fanatics carry 
on their intrigues among all the South- Slav popu- 
lations is beyond doubt; and if we consider the 
strange personality of Mr. Wesselitzky Bogidar- 
ovic, who first appeared as a Russian secret agent, 
and then as a Bosnian leader of rebels, the question 
forces itself even upon childlike temperaments, 
whether the connections of such people do not 
extend to very high circles in Petersburg. Only 
do not let any one imagine that a long-lasting 
national agitation could be kept going by these 
means. If the Russians in Petersburg and Mos- 
cow build a few Bulgarian schools for their kins- 
men and Orthodox Believers, where is the wrong 
in it? And would those schools flourish and have 
influence if self-consciousness and a tendency to 
education had not long been awakened in the 
Bulgarian nation? 

Perhaps there was yet another way whereby the 
domination of the ruling people could have been 
maintained amid the growing strength of the Ra- 
yahs. The Empire might perhaps have kept alive, 



Turkey and the Great Nations 31 

if it further developed, according to the altered 
circumstances, the well-tried, shrewd system of 
separating the nations and churches, extended the 
privileges of individual peoples and creeds, and 
carefully protected the Christians from the inter- 
ference of Mohammedan officials by a well-assured 
provincial independence. This way was full of 
danger; it might easily have led to the formation 
of semi-sovereign tributary states. In order to 
adopt it the Porte must needs have possessed 
an unusual measure of self-knowledge and self- 
denial. Meanwhile it was the only possible one, 
and it was therefore always recommended by 
Russia, the best judge of Turkish conditions; be- 
cause the old truth, that the might of empires is 
maintained by the same methods as created them, 
is even more true of unchangeable theocracies 
than of other states. But as the Porte cherished 
a well-grounded suspicion of Russian advice, 
it at last, after long inactivity, chose the method 
which was directly opposed to the views of Peters- 
burg. Owing to the rising influence of the Western 
Powers there began, with Mahmud II, the aston- 
ishing attempt to alter Turkey according to the 
pattern of the unified Western States. Sultan 
Mahmud created an army on the European model, 
Rashid Pasha the mechanism of a uniformly 
centralized government, the Hatti-Shereef of 
Gulhane and Abdul -Mejid's Hat-Humayum 
promised equality of justice to all subjects of the 
Great Lord, Fuad Pasha and Ali Pasha introduced 



32 Turkey and the Great Nations 

the Neo-Napoleonic phrase into the blessed Turk- 
ish Empire and announced that the time for 
grandes agglomerations nationales had also arrived 
for the East, that a unified Ottoman nation must 
be created. Lastly, the enlightened Neo-Turk- 
dom has likewise drunk to-day of the Constitu- 
tional poison — which acts upon such peoples like 
brandy on the Redskins — and demands a national 
Parliamentary Council side by side with the 
Sultan. 

There is, unfortunately, merely a trifle lacking 
for such a national council: viz., a nation. The 
Greeks and Slavs are not Turks; they can not 
and will not be Turks; and the Turks can never 
seriously allow them to be so. These so-called 
reform-politics, which have now been trying for 
several decades to abolish the racial hatreds and 
religious fanaticisms of the Eastern world by a few 
crumbs fallen from the table of Parisian constitu- 
tion-makers, are nothing but a gigantic falsehood ; 
and the patronage bestowed now by France, now 
by England, on Turkish enlightenment, simply 
shows that these Western Powers, in their self-com- 
placent ignorance, have become quite incapa- 
ble of understanding a foreign population. In 
order to foresee the fate of the Neo-Turkish 
reforms only a little honesty is needed, certainly 
not any seer's gift ; for the same problem which is 
to-day arising on the Bosphorus occupied the 
astute minds of the whole world once before for 
many years, when well-meaning diplomats hoped 



Turkey and the Great Nations 33 

to bless the Holy See with a constitution. A 
constitutional Sultan is as impossible as a con- 
stitutional Pope. Even as the Cardinals could 
never recognize a lay council as a power with equal 
rights, just so little can the Osman Believer regard 
the Rayah as his equal. Although a hat of the 
Sultans may sympathetically describe the Chris- 
tians as tehah, as subjects, yet, according to God's 
word, which the Padishah himself dares not offend, 
they remain the rabble. It is again simply throw- 
ing sand into the eyes of the Prankish bear when 
the highly amusing manifesto of Mussulman pa- 
triots announces to-day to Europe's statesmen 
the news that the Koran itself enjoins national 
assemblies. The Koran says: "Believers shall be 
governed by their national Council" — whilst un- 
believers are to bend their brows to the dust 
before Believers. In Switzerland, a glorious 
history, lived in common, and active participation 
in a free and dignified State, gradually developed, 
among races with different languages, a common 
political feeling, which is hardly inferior to the 
natural national pride of the great civilized na- 
tions. But where is the moral force in Turkey 
which could compass the much-vaunted "fusion 
of races"? Language and education, creed and 
morality, ancient sacred memories and economic 
interests, estrange the masses from the hated 
masters. Force alone keeps the deadly enemies 
together. Should the longed-for new "Ottoman 
nation" base itself on the exalting conscious- 



34 Turkey and the Great Nations 

ness that *'we are all of us subjects of one of the 
most pitiable countries in Europe"? The Sultan 
cannot seriously put the Rayahs on a footing of 
equality with the dominating race so long as he 
cannot rely on their loyalty with some certainty; 
but he does not even dare to raise troops from the 
Rayahs, and it would be altogether impossible 
for the masters and the masses to serve in the 
same regiments. 

The Moslems cannot honestly recognize a condi- 
tion of law which would have even the faintest 
likeness to the common law of European States, 
so long as a deep spiritual movement has not 
radically changed their whole thought and feeling, 
down to bodily habits ; and such a reformation can- 
not proceed from the enlightenment of the de- 
spised Western lands ; it would only be possible if 
Allah were again to raise up an inspired Prophet, 
who should proclaim a milder form of Islam. 
What, however, we see to-day in the Mohammedan 
world is the exact opposite of a relaxing of religious 
harshness. The Prophet's religion has not been 
touched by the decline of the Mohammedan 
States. It is still alive, the old proud, strongly 
religious, warlike Islam; even nowadays all the 
manly and respect-worthy forces of the Turkish 
character are rooted in it. Bloody outrages, like 
the Sepoys' revolt and Lord Mayo's murder, like 
the religious war of the Druses and the massacre 
of Salonica, occasionally reveal what primitive 
forces are acting underground in the broad terri- 



Turkey and the Great Nations 35 

tones from the Ganges to the Adriatic Sea, ready 
to explode violently. Any Sultan who should 
seriously try to be a Frank will be wrathfully 
opposed by the conscience of the True Believers — 
resolute and invincible, as in the case of the der- 
vish who cried out to Sultan Mahmud II, on the 
bridge of Galata : " Giaour Padishah, are you not 
at last weary of your horrors?" The dervish was 
strangled, but the crowd of Believers saw a halo 
hovering about his corpse. And the people were 
right ; for so long as the Koran remains the supreme 
law-book of all Islamic States, the introduction of 
Western conceptions of law is a degradation and 
crime. 

It is therefor that all the reform-laws of the last 
three Sultans have been simply so many steps 
towards destruction. The most perilous time 
for a declining State always begins when its 
Government tries to better itself, and thereby 
itself challenges criticism. The old Bourbon 
kingdom did not fall in the prime of its vices, but 
under the only king who strove well-meaningly to 
abolish the ancient abuses; the Second Empire 
did not collapse before its Parliamentary period. 
In like manner, the worst days arose for the Osman 
Empire when attempts at reform were started. 
The experience of half a century shows that Count 
Nesselrode was right when (in a remarkable 
dispatch of 21st January, 1827) he opined about 
Mahmud 11 's innovations that "they are shatter- 
ing the ancient power of the State, without setting 



36 Turkey and the Great Nations 

a new one in its place." A tragic figure, that 
powerful Mahmud, the last great one in Osman 
history! He waded in blood over his knees in 
order to give his people a better time, and he sank 
despairing into his grave, conscious he had made 
a failure of life. He was once readily compared 
with Peter the Great, and the assassination of the 
Janissaries with the annihilation of the Strelitzi. 
But the barbarian genius of the North ruled a 
people which, despite all its crudity, was docile and 
mouldable, and understood how to follow out its 
master's bold ideas; whilst from the soul of the 
Osman nation the Sultan's Prankish innovations 
fell away without a trace, like water from waxed 
cloth. 

The annihilation of the Janissaries was a momen- 
tary gain, because the wild, uncivilized troops 
menaced civil peace, but it was a yet greater loss 
for the future, for that massacre put a period to the 
clever old system which compelled the Rayahs 
themselves to fashion their own whips. The 
Christians forthwith possessed the forces of their 
youthful manhood ; the whole enormous btirden of 
war-service and the guarding of subjects now lies 
on the shoulders of Osmans alone — an overstrain 
of the powers of the ruling race which can but 
benefit the masses. Likewise the Empire's mili- 
tary strength gained only slightly by the deed of 
violence, as was soon displayed in the campaigns 
against Russia and Egypt. In the same way it 
was merely a hand-to-mouth measure by which 



Turkey and the Great Nations 37 

the Fanariots lost their influential posts at the 
time of the Greek uprising, and the powers of the 
Greek Patriarch were limited. The Porte has 
since gone further on that alluring path, until 
finally it has recently granted a national Head 
of the Church to the most numerous of the Rayah- 
races, the Bulgarians, and has thus destroyed the 
Greeks' ancient ecclesiastical State. This State 
in the State, however troublesome though it might 
sometimes be, was nevertheless bound by import- 
ant interests to the maintenance of the Osman 
Empire, and kept the Rayahs together; since it 
was abolished, the centrifugal forces working 
among the Christian Deoples are completely set 
free. 

Meanwhile the numberless unkept promises of 
freedom on the part of the Sultans had a more 
destructive effect than anything else, for they 
enhanced the ancient and deadly hatred of the 
Rayahs by a further ill-feeling caused by this out- 
rageous breach of promise, and degraded the Porte 
in Europe's eyes. Who does not know of the 
farcical pantomime that took place at the pro- 
clamation of the Hatti-Shereef of Gulhane? First 
of all the Sultan's Court Astrologer came forward 
with his astrolabe in order to calculate the favour- 
able hour willed by God, and when Allah spoke 
and said, ''Now is the time," the great decree 
of liberty was read out which bestowed upon the 
Rayahs all the glories of Western toleration and 
equality before the law. Of course all these hats, 



38 Turkey and the Great Nations 

granted to such a people, were so much "paper 
written with honey," as the astute Moslems are 
wont to say among themselves with amused wink- 
ings of the eye. Their enforcement was never 
at all earnestly essayed; the Neo-Turkish wor- 
shippers of Western countries showed exactly the 
same qualities as the Old Believers in the art of 
deceiving the Christians. The two friends, Ali 
Pasha and Fuad Pasha, are rightly held to be the 
noblest and most highly-educated of the youngest 
generations of Turkish statesmen. And yet it 
was Ali who induced the Cretans to submit by 
resounding promises of freedom, and afterwards 
forgot all about it; whilst Fuad expressed to the 
Christians in Syria his deep regret at the massacre 
of the Druses, and then intentionally allowed the 
fighters of God to escape. The word of the 
Prophet and the natiu-e of the State are in fact 
mightier than the outwardly assimilated European 
culttu-e. The farce of reform reached its zenith 
at the period of the Crimean War. The "Great 
Elchi," Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, ruled in 
Stamboul, and even to-day we hardly understand 
how a statesman so highly gifted and such a judge 
of men could have squandered his extraordinary 
will-power on such an entirely impossible policy. 
He himself perceived, and admitted long ago, his 
old mistake. The great Powers admitted the 
Turkish Empire, then yet again resurrected, 
into the community of European international 
law at the very moment when the Porte itself ex- 



Turkey and the Great Nations 39 

hibited a formal testimony to its weakness in the 
Humayum hat, and unambiguously showed how 
little it deserved to be treated as a European 
Power. The new decree of liberty simply repeated 
what had already been solemnly promised a 
decade and a half previously, and merely proved 
that this Government was neither able nor willing 
to be just to Christians. 

In very truth Turkey left the ranks of independ- 
ent States as a result of the Treaty of Paris. 
The Porte had to proclaim the hat; it was the 
condition of admittance to the European Concert. 
It accordingly undertook towards the Great Powers 
the duty of reforms, and came under the police 
observation of Europe, although the phrasing of 
the Treaty did not recognize this inevitable 
effect. Turkey to-day is indeed more dependent 
than ever; she has already had to suffer the 
armed intervention of the Powers in Syria. 

What were the consequences of all these legis- 
lative experiments, which were so often welcomed 
in the English Parliament with the jubilant cry, 
"Turkey is saved, and the liberation of the Rayahs 
achieved"? The fez has driven out the turban, 
the beauties of the seraglio wear Paris fashions, 
and doubtless also adorn their walls with a few 
bad European lithographs. So that it certainly 
happens that a portrait of the Prince of Wales, 
with his name under it, is introduced as Napoleon 
III to smiling visitors from Pera. Society drinks 
champagne, and murders French; Young Turkey 



40 Turkey and the Great Nations 

brings home a few strong Voltairean phrases from 
his years of study in Paris, jeers at the creed of 
his fathers, and ennobles the ancient Eastern 
viciousness by the virtuous habits of the Closerie 
des Lilas. Inconvenient Pashas are no longer got 
rid of by the silken string, but they are banished, 
and the assassin's dagger is now used only on 
quite exceptional occasions. The enlightened 
Turkish statesmen have diligently assimilated all 
the arts of Napoleonic Press-control; they are 
masters in the manipulation of correspondence 
and entrefilets; the golden pills kneaded on the 
Bosphorus can always find a few obliging patients 
in the journalistic circles of London and Paris, 
but especially among the industrious Oriental 
kin who dominate the Vienna Press. The Porte 
strove with even greater success to make an appear- 
ance also in the bourses of Europe as a member of 
equal standing with the civilized community of 
States. The rejuvenated domestic economy of its 
Government soon threw into the shade the boldest 
deeds of European finance. During about four- 
teen years of peace this land, with its measureless 
natural resources, burdened itself with a debt of 
over five milliards of francs, and finally reached 
that unparalleled Budget which, out of £18,000,- 
000 revenue, put aside two for the Sultan's house- 
hold, fifteen for the interest on the National 
Debt, and kept only one million for the army, 
navy, and officials. 

The ancient, humiliating head- tax on the 



Turkey and the Great Nations 41 

Christians was removed ; but as the Rayahs do not 
serve in the army, and the Osmanli did not wish 
to give them weapons, the ancient tax returned 
under the euphonious title of a war contribution, 
and the sole result of the reform was the increased 
burden on the Christians. A few Christians 
were summoned to the district councils, but they 
did not dare to open their mouths; the Giaour 
remained without rights, since no Osman judge 
allowed his evidence to weigh against a Mussul- 
man. The oppressive system of tax-farming, 
the iltisan, continued, despite all promises, for the 
tax-farming is based upon the natural economy; 
the Porte possessed neither will nor power to 
raise the rough Rayah peasants to a higher degree 
of economy, and the commissions of the tax- 
farmers remained indispensable to their officials. 
Year after year, desperate Christian peasants 
make over their property to the moshes, and 
receive it back tax-free; the vakuf is driving out 
the mulk, the mortmain latifundia threatened 
entirely to consume the small, free landed 
property. Innumerable revolts of the ill-treated 
people proved that even the submissiveness of the 
Orientals, which can endure indescribable hard- 
ships, found its limit under this regime. 

Briefly, the ancient system, the exploitation 
of the Rayahs by the master-people and its assist- 
ants' assistants, was not altered in the slightest by 
the Neo-Turkish reforms, only the ruling power of 
the Osmans vanished. The ancient Turkdom com- 



42 Turkey and the Great Nations 

pelled the admiration of its foes by the strength of 
its character; the Neo-Turkish method, with its 
unbroken barbarism and the shiny Prankish varnish 
over it, resembles that of the deHghted Indian who 
has put on a frock-coat over his naked, tattooed 
body. The final reason for this incorrigibleness 
of the State undoubtedly lies in the ominous fact 
that the Oriental theocracy appears in this case at 
the same time as the foreign government of a small 
minority. Purely Mohammedan States such as 
Egypt are in a happier position; they may intro- 
duce a few European ideas without endangering 
the existence of the Government. 

The epoch of reforms was one of ceaseless defeats 
and losses for the exterior power of the Empire. 
Algiers fell to France ; Egypt won the heredity of its 
ruling family and an independent position which 
approaches sovereignty; respect for the Porte is 
weakened in Mesopotamia, in Arabia it is an 
empty name; Servia and Greece gained their 
freedom; the Danubian principalities became 
unified, and almost quite independent; the estu- 
aries of the river first fell to Russia, then to the 
management of a European Commission. Of 
the 16,000,000 inhabitants of the Balkan Penin- 
sula — that is the calculation of Jakschitsch — 
7,500,000 are to-day already entirely or nearly 
independent, and the Porte possesses now in 
Europe only about 8,500,000 direct subjects. 
The provinces are declining or at a standstill, 
the power of the Empire is receding to the capital 



Turkey and the Great Nations 43 

more and more. The importance of these facts 
is in no way lessened by the fond assurance of the 
friends of Turkey that the Rayahs would never 
have freed themselves if Europe, especially Russia, 
had not supported them. The insinuation is 
as brilliant as the assumption; the tree would 
not grow if it did not derive nourishment from 
the atmosphere and earth. The Rayahs, after 
all, do not inhabit a lonely, distant island, but live 
in the vicinity of luckier nations allied to them 
by race and creed, and so long as the last feehng 
of brotherly community does not perish in Christen- 
dom, there is always bound to be some European 
Power which shall take care of the Rayahs, either 
out of self-interest or sympathy. Whether the 
Turks were able to put down the revolt of the 
Serbs with their own forces or not, it is at least 
beyond doubt that Ibrahim Pasha would assuredly 
have smashed the rebellious Greeks had not the 
European Powers intervened. But that inter- 
vention was an obvious necessity; Europe could 
not look on indifferently whilst a Christian people 
was being annihilated by Egyptian hordes, and 
the great English statesman, George Canning, 
who, breaking once and for all with the traditions 
of a narrow-hearted trading policy, encompassed 
this result, will always receive fame for willing 
what was necessary. Nowadays, after the Porte 
has made and broken such numerous promises, it 
has become quite impossible for the Great Powers, 
and particularly for Russia, to leave the fate of 



44 Turkey and the Great Nations 

the Rayahs to be solely determined by the 
pleasure of the Turks. Count Nesselrode once 
expressed himself very challengingly, but plain- 
spokenly and pregnantly, about Russia's relations 
to the Christians in Turkey. In a letter to Herr 
von Brunnow (ist June, 1853) he referred to the 
sympathies and common interests which bound his 
Court to the Rayahs and made its interference 
in Turkish affairs possible at any time. He 
concluded: **We shall hardly be asked to dispense 
with this influence in order to dissipate exag- 
gerated anxieties. Putting the impossible case, 
that we should wish to do so, we should neverthe- 
less not be able to do so" — and, he might have 
added, ''even if we ourselves were able to do so, 
the Southern Slavs would never believe that the 
White Czar had withdrawn his hand from them. " 
And on that it all depends. The confident belief 
of the Rayahs, supported by facts, that they can- 
not be wholly sacrificed by Russia and the other 
European Powers, is a spur which is continually 
driving them on to new things, is an operative 
power in the latest history of the Orient, and will 
not be abolished by the strong words of the Eng- 
lish Press. 

None of the small States which have thus formed 
themselves with the help of Europe has hitherto 
reached sound political conditions. A strong and 
far-seeing absolutism, which should awaken the 
country's economic and intellectual forces whilst 
at the same time leaving the communities some 



Turkey and the Great Nations 45 

degree of independence, is clearly the kind of 
government best suited to such a state of civili- 
zation. Instead of which the whole glorious Neo- 
French Constitutional quackery was introduced 
everywhere. Each one of these little nations 
boasts of the most liberal constitution in the 
world, and tries to outdo all the fashionable 
follies of Western Radicalism by the abolition of 
capital punishment, of the nobility, of the classes, 
and similar jokes. None of the young States 
has yet acquired a firmly established dynasty, the 
great advantage still possessed by Turkey. If 
the Prince is a native, he is deposed, because the 
free Rumanian, Hellene, etc., will not bow down 
to a person like himself; if he is a foreigner, he is 
driven away, because the proud nation will not 
endure the yoke of foreign domination. It is un- 
deniably difficult to escape this pleasing dilemma. 
A wild quarrel between parties, which hardly 
attempts to hide its real object, the hunt for 
office, is demoralizing the peoples, and so crippling 
the powers of the Governments that even the 
clever, energetic, and conscientious Prince Charles 
of Rumania could only achieve in this instance 
a portion of what he would have achieved without 
the blessing of Parliamentary government by 
parties. Still, it would be unfair to judge these 
peoples solely by their weakest aspect, by their 
skill in ruling. It is indeed incontestable that 
their social conditions are slowly progressing, 
that, especially in Greece, a noteworthy impulse 



46 Turkey and the Great Nations 

towards culture has been awakened; briefly, 
that they are to-day happier in every respect than 
they were formerly under the rule of the Crescent. 
In the neighbourhood of the Acropolis, where only 
a few decayed huts stood in the time of the Turks, 
there is to-day a comfortable quarter, with 
churches and schools, and a flourishing little 
university. And, what weighs more than any- 
thing with a politician, the liberation of these 
countries has already long been an irrevocable 
fact, the restoration of the Crescent in Athens, 
Belgrade, and Bucharest is no more within the 
sphere of the possible. The rise of the Rayahs has 
had permanent, definite results, therefore it will 
continue and progress. 

Recently the movement has already seized 
upon those countries which were hitherto held 
to be the most trustworthy; the Bulgarians were 
always despised as the most servile of all the 
Rayahs, Bosnia with its Mohammedan Begs 
was even highly esteemed as the strong arm of 
warlike Islam. However ominous this symptom 
seems, it must nevertheless be recognized that 
with every further step forward the falling away 
meets with increasing hindrances. The liberation 
of Rumania, Servia, and Greece occurred under 
unusually favourable circumstances. Rumania 
always enjoyed a certain independence; and, 
both in Greece and Servia, warlike Christian mount- 
aineers lived next to a small number of Mohammed- 
an immigrants; so that here the alien population 



Turkey and the Great Nations 47 

could be easily expelled after victory. The three 
liberated States now treat Islam more intolerantly 
than the Turks did Christendom. To-day, how- 
ever, the movement is approaching the coastal 
regions of Bulgaria and RumeHa, which the 
Moslems occupy in dense masses. Jakschitsch 
reckons among the Porte's direct subjects in 
Europe 4.7 millions of Christians, and 3.6 millions 
of Mohammedans, and though he may perhaps 
rather overrate the number of the latter, it is clear 
that three millions of Moslems can neither be 
converted, nor destroyed, nor probably expelled. 
During the last ten years, the Porte settled about 
half a million of Circassian fugitives, from the 
Caucasus, near the Danube in the villages of 
expelled Christians : one of the few acts of modern 
Osman policy which still remind one of the govern- 
ing skill of greater days. With these fanatical 
foes of Russia, with the other Mohammedans 
of the Peninsula, finally with the thirteen millions 
of her Asiatic Moslems, she may confidently expect 
yet once more to quell the revolt in Bulgaria and 
Bosnia — provided only a spark of the old power of 
action still survives in Stamboul, and the Euro- 
pean Powers do not intervene. 

And even if the liberation of the two rebellious 
provinces took place, the decisive problem as to 
the future of the East would not be touched on, 
viz., the fate of the capital. There on the Bos- 
phorus and Dardanelles dwells that section of 
the Greeks who from time immemorial have most 



48 Turkey and the Great Nations 

readily bent their necks beneath the yoke both 
of Byzantine and Osman slavery. They have 
grown rich, those fellows, by energy in commerce, 
and still more by the complaisance of Turkish 
statesmen. It is at least improbable that this 
people should rise of its own accord, that the rabble 
of the capital, a blend of all the slums of Europe 
and Asia, should dare to war against a domination 
which is both feared and convenient. There is 
hitherto no sign of any dangerous agitation in 
those circles. So far as human judgment goes, 
the Crescent will not fall from the cupolas of the 
Church of Santa Sophia until the army of a Euro- 
pean Power plants its standards on those ancient 
walls which the last Comnenus defended to his 
death. And nobody knows better than the Porte 
what impediments to such a disaster are opposed 
by the jealousies of the Great Powers; for amid 
its decline it has nevertheless retained something 
of that barbaric cunning which once caused the 
great Suleiman to ask the French agent: "Is the 
Emperor Charles at peace with Martin Luther?" 
These general conditions alone, and not the 
vital strength of the State itself, justified the 
Porte in the hope that its doom may now again 
be postponed for a few years. I should be insult- 
ing my readers if I were to speak more at length 
about the weirdly ludicrous farce being played 
to-day by the English Ambassador on the Bos- 
phorus. Surely we stupid Franks are no longer 
so childish as to faithfully believe that the scientific 



Turkey and the Great Nations 49 

idealism of the strenuous softas got rid of an 
uncultured Sultan by means of suicide ; it would be 
the same as if the Wingolf Theological Union 
wanted to depose the German Emperor. "Execu- 
tion is better than disturbance, " says the Prophet. 
Behind the softas stood the Old and Young Turkish 
statesmen, all who desired to maintain the mastery 
of the Moslems over the Christian masses. In 
times of quiet, public opinion can neither form 
nor express itself among the Turks, since the 
newly invented free Press does not reach the mass 
of the people; it therefore flames up all the more 
suddenly and violently in days of peril, if the ruling 
race thinks itself menaced in its ruling rights. 
Behind the Osmans, however, Sir Henry Elliot 
was the leader of the Revolution. The English 
Premier in the joy of his heart has already revealed 
that transparent secret; for at a moment when 
decency forbade him from knowing anything 
about the opinions of the new Sultan, he related 
to the House of Commons that better times had 
now come for Turkey. 

It is perhaps possible that the world may still 
gaze for a few years upon the wonderful comedy of 
these "better times." It knows the plot and the 
sequence of scenes quite accurately, and has still 
a vivid recollection of the impressiveness with 
which the great comedian Abdul Aziz once de- 
claimed the effective concluding verse of the first 
act: "Turkey shall be new-built on the principles 
of a legislative State." But the name of the 



50 Turkey and the Great Nations 

dramatic poet is this time not Stratford but Elliot, 
and he will be desirous of embellishing the old 
play with some new inventions; perhaps he will 
really cheer us up with the gallows '-humoiu* of an 
Ottoman Parliament. There are enough Catonic 
natives among the merchants of the Fanar, as 
well as among the Armenian and Greek tax- 
farmers; with the aid of the customary baksheesh 
the requisite number of loyal Rayah deputies will 
assuredly be found. And what a triumph it 
would be for Disraeli's diplomacy if it succeeded 
in introducing a fresh kind of constitutional 
monarchy into Europe's constitutional history, 
viz., parliamentarism tempered by murder! In 
what illuminating relief would this picture stand 
out in the dithyrambs of the English Press against 
the well-known descriptions of the Russian Con- 
stitution ! 

What the Rayahs have to expect from the new 
Government the semi-official Oriental correspond- 
ence has just confessed in an unguarded moment 
of sincerity. Tolerance — thus it ran — may be 
expected by Christians, but no political rights on 
any account from a Sovereign who owes his throne 
to the Osmans. That is the truth of the matter. 
Even as the Turks formerly replied to the outburst 
of the Greek revolution by the murder of the 
Patriarch of Constantinople, they have to-day 
answered the Bosnio- Bulgarian revolt and the 
Serbian war preparations by the Sultan's deposi- 
tion. It was an uprising of the old master-race 



Turkey and the Great Nations 51 

which was accompanied by its usual brutahty, 
but which was quite respect- worthy of its kind. 
The Old and Young Turks are quite united in 
their determination to keep their feet on the 
Christians' necks. They laugh, rightly too, about 
the notion of comfortable persons that the Sultan, 
expelled from Stamboul, will presently govern 
an incomparably happier Asiatic Empire from 
Broussa ; such a rejuvenation of a Power which has 
just been disgracefully defeated would be contrary 
to all experience of Oriental history. They feel 
so safe amid the quarrels between the European 
Powers, that doubtless many a Turkish statesman 
may quietly wish that Russia might, by a false 
step, give the Porte an opportunity for forcing a 
war. The new Sultan is already in the middle 
thirties; about that time of life the inevitable 
results of harem-life are wont rapidly to appear 
in the latest generations of Osman's descendants. 
Should he, however, remain in the long run more 
responsible than his two glorious predecessors, 
he can never belie the origin of his government. 
With England's help, financial means and military 
forces will probably be found so as to overcome the 
embarrassments of the moment ; perhaps real satis- 
faction will be given for the murder of the two 
consuls instead of open contempt. Still, if Allah 
bestows his blessings, everything will after all 
remain as it is. The Rayahs cannot put any trust 
in the Porte's promises so long as there are not 
some Christians in the Porte's Ministerial Council 



52 Turkey and the Great Nations 

— not corrupt Fanariots, but trusty agents of the 
small races — and such a proposal would now be 
simply impossible. 

As already stated, one may regard Turkey as a 
religious State, but the Padishah is the Caliph 
of all the Sunnites, and the Caliphate's mighty 
actuaHty will be stronger than a paper promise. 
With their customary diplomatic cleverness they 
may make the most delightful promises to the 
Great Powers, but the valis and kaimakams will 
not forget the equally customary and ancient art 
of making life sour for the Rayahs, and the English 
will again, just as under Stratford's rule, receive 
commands to report nothing adverse about the 
Turkish administration. So, perhaps, the world 
will keep patient until after a few years the Empire 
is involved in a fresh crisis. In politics incom- 
petence in living is by no means synonymous with 
death, as we Germans know by the experiences 
of our small States ; and the power of sluggishness 
is nowhere greater than in the East. 

Will matters really develop so slowly? The 
decision depends on the conduct of the Great 
Powers. 

He who speaks about the Oriental Question with 
a great show of moral indignation, ever runs the 
risk of being suspected of hypocrisy. It is hardly 
edifying to find to-day in part of the German Press 
a repetition of English stock speeches against 
Muscovite selfishness. Surely it ought to be 
taken quite as a matter of course by us honest 



Turkey and the Great Nations 53 

Germans that Russia and England, the two prota- 
gonists there in the East, think first of their 
own strength, and both are pursuing their purpose 
with that complete unscrupulousness which has 
been peculiar for thousands of years to all fights 
between Powers in the Orient. If you examine 
the matter impartially, you cannot deny that 
Russia has always judged the character of the 
Turkish State, the unchangeableness of that 
theocracy, more accurately than most of the other 
Powers. In this regard, Petersburg politics was 
always superior to its opponents, even at the 
periods when they arrogantly underrated the 
Turks' power of resistance. The biting irony with 
which the Russian Plenipotentiary to the Paris 
Congress was wont to accompany the reform- 
programmes of the West has met with full justi- 
fication in the events of the following decades. 

The grounds of this superiority are tolerably 
obvious. The Russians are themselves a half- 
Eastern people, and are not regarded as Franks by 
Moslems; they have been in immemorial inter- 
course with Asiatics, understand how to treat their 
Mohammedan subjects very skilfully, and formed 
earlier than the rest of European peoples a con- 
viction about the future of the Balkan countries 
which has become a national tradition owing 
to two centuries of wars and negotiations. That 
the strongest of the Slav Powers, which bears the 
Imperial Eagle of Byzantium in its coat-of-arms, 
must act so as to expel the Crescent from the 



54 Turkey and the Great Nations 

Czarograd of the South, requires no elucidation. 
Since the Porte by the Peace of Kutchuk-Kainar- 
ji had to promise the Petersburg Court to protect 
the Christian reHgion and its Churches, Russia 
has posed as the lawful protector of the Greek 
Christians in Turkey; only an Orthodox Believer 
can become Russian Ambassador in Stamboul. 
This tendency towards Byzantium is to Russians 
what their "manifest destiny" was to the North 
Americans, viz., a political necessity imposed by 
the Empire's world-position as well as by the 
nation's holiest feelings and memories. In his 
Oriental scheming all the Russian's sincere idealism 
comes to light, especially the strength of his 
religious feeling. It is not only the masses who 
revere Holy Russia in their State, but the higher 
classes also, despite their Voltairean education, 
regard Russiadom and the Orthodox Creed as 
synonymous, and there is often to be found in 
these circles an enthusiastic veneration for the 
''Primary Church of Christendom," which alone 
has remained unalterable. A short time ago a 
Russian statesman, one of the freest- thinking 
heads among his race, wrote to me : ' * In our religion 
the Communion Cup remains concealed with a 
covering till the moment of transubstantiation ; 
the day will come when the covering will also fall 
from the Orthodox Church and its Divine contents 
will be shown to the world." I certainly doubt 
if the Russian Church has really such a wealth of 
hidden moral forces at its disposal; suffice it that 



Turkey and the Great Nations 55 

the inmost being of the State and of popular opin- 
ion compels every Czar to maintain the ancient 
union with their brother-believers in the South. 

But the forms and methods of this policy have 
manifoldly changed in rapid sequence; a doctrin- 
aire insistence on ready-made programmes is the 
last reproach that could be brought against the 
realism of Petersburg diplomacy. In the eight- 
eenth century Russia was a Power highly danger- 
ous to the peace of the world, expanding hugely, 
absorbing everything which lay within reach of its 
arms; the land-grabbing Cabinet policy of those 
days found, naturally, its most audacious expon- 
ents in the least-civilized of courts. It would be 
well for Russia if she no longer denied to-day what 
is a historical fact: that Peter the Great wished 
to be buried in Byzantium; that Muennich de- 
scribed Turkey as the Czar's assured booty; 
that Catherine cherished boundless ideas of 
conquest when she negotiated with Joseph II and 
Thugut, and had her second grandson baptized 
with the name of the Byzantine Emperors; that 
the Peace of Kutchuk-Kainarji was carried 
out in an extremely violent way, owing to Russia 
— and so on, ad infinitum. The echoes of this 
poHcy of conquest could be heard well into our 
nineteenth century. For instance, the acquisi- 
tion by Czar Nicholas of the mouths of the Danube 
was an outrageous attack on the territory of a 
foreign Power, which Europe should never have 
tolerated. It is only since Alexander II 's Reform 



56 Turkey and the Great Nations 

Laws that this conquest policy has been given 
up. One reform engenders another, every 
cut into the ancient injuries of a State exposes 
other wounds previously unnoticed; the aboli- 
tion of serfdom is no longer enough, the Empire 
requries comprehensive agrarian laws, in order 
that the free peasant may also obtain inde- 
pendent possession of soil. New and unavoid- 
able problems for legislation are quickly arising, 
and the small number of really educated men 
at the disposal of the Government is scarcely 
sufficient to solve them all. Moreover, the free 
discussions of the last two decades have only just 
stirred up in Russia a real national life; even as 
they have learnt to adopt as a necessity the new 
State-formations of Central Europe, they are also 
asking their own government for a national 
foreign policy. 

And nobody can deny that Czar Alexander has 
so far satisfied their claim. The quelling of the Pol- 
ish uprising was, despite all the horrors connected 
with it, after all only an act of self-defence, 
compelled by the Poles' incomprehensible folly, as 
well as by the unanimous desire of the Russian 
people; and that splendid campaign of conquest, 
too, in Central Asia is a national deed, however 
paradoxical it may seem. The Russians are not 
meeting there, like the Britons in the East Indies, 
a very ancient civilization, equal in birth, but 
naked barbarism; they appear as the heralds of a 
superior civilization, and yet are not imapproach- 



Turkey and the Great Nations 57 

ably alien to the conquered by descent and moral- 
ity. The conquest is therefore much easier of 
accomplishment, and it needs more rarely, than 
was once the case with the East India Company, 
those unworthy means which were needed for the 
subjection of India. The conqueror may expect, 
gradually, to inspire those hordes with his civili- 
zation, just as he has already Russified Kazan 
and Astrakhan, the Tartars of the Crimea, and the 
Kirghiz tribes, yes, even the greater part of the 
Caucasus. We Liberals of the West, however, 
have gradually grown out of the ridiculous enthus- 
iasm of earlier days and begin to perceive that it is 
gain for culture when the bestial Circassians, 
Luanetians, etc., become Russians. This tremen- 
dous outflow of Slavdom towards the East cannot 
stop before the whole boundless regions from the 
Amur and the Chinese boundary to the Ural form 
a safe commercial dominion. Prince Gortchakof's 
well-known phrase, '^Cest done toujours d recom- 
mencer^^^ hits the nail on the head. 

Now, is it at all credible that a Government 
which places before itself so great and difficult and 
yet attainable aims, both in its home and foreign 
policy, should pursue a Napoleonic adventurer's 
policy in the case of Turkey ? The Russians are not 
nearer to the Serbs and Greeks than the Germans 
to the Danes and English; with the Rumanians 
they have absolutely nothing in common except 
the Orthodox Creed and that incomplete civili- 
zation which distinguishes the whole Slav- Jewish- 



58 Turkey and the Great Nations 

Wallachian Eastern half of Europe. The morbid 
national pride of the small Rayah peoples rejects 
scornfully the idea of becoming Russian; the 
Greek especially despises the Muscovites as Slavs 
and barbarians, although he condescends to use 
them for his purposes. Many unpleasant truths 
may be enunciated about the lamentable realms 
Rumania and Greece; they are not Russian 
provinces, much rather are they very jealous of 
their national independence. That fanatical Pan- 
Slavists long for the conquest of Byzantium is 
known to all; but can an intelligent Russian 
Government commit itself to such madness.^ It 
does not possess the means of destroying the 
deeply-marked nationality of the small Rayah 
peoples, it cannot desire to forge yet another 
Polish cannon-ball for its feet, and, above all, it 
owes its powerful position among the Balkan 
States, in great part, to the submissiveness of the 
Rayahs and cannot dream of subduing them by 
force. Several historical philosophers demon- 
strate, with an amount of erudition which would 
be worthy of a finer cause, that in the cold North- 
ern country life is really quite too uncomfortable, 
a natural instinct is impelling the Russians to 
exchange these inhospitable regions for the gor- 
geous South. At Petersburg, however, people will 
be very well aware that a population of 75,000,000 
cannot, nowadays, casually start a new migra- 
tion and leave the scenes of its thousand-years* 
work. 



Turkey and the Great Nations 59 

It is also simply a learned fallacy to gloomily 
maintain, in a free version of Alexander I's 
notorious phrase, that the Bosphorus is the key to 
the Russian house, the Czar's Government must 
aim at its possession. After all, the Sound is the 
second key to the Russian house, and when has 
Russia ever tried to conquer Copenhagen, the 
Byzantium of the North? Just as the Petersburg 
Court is able to feel quite at ease, now that the 
Sound is in the hands of two harmless Middle 
Powers, it is likewise naturally only so far interested 
in the Bosphorus, viz., that it should be ruled 
by a friendly Orthodox Power. Russia does not 
wish to conquer the Bosphorus for itself, because 
it has not the necessary power. No European 
State, Germany least of all, can tolerate a per- 
manent Russian settlement in Stamboul, if only 
because of the feverish excitement which would be 
bound to flame through all Slav races at such a 
movement; and how is it thinkable that they 
could maintain themselves there, if a German army 
entered Poland, Austria's troops marched over 
the Balkans, and an English fleet lay before 
SeragHo Point? Who has a right to attribute 
such gasconading tricks to the Russian Court? 

Emperor Alexander has already proved, since 
the beginning of his reign, by the conclusion of the 
Paris Treaty how remote such visions are from 
him. He was certainly unable to remain per- 
manently content with that transaction, and for 
good reasons. The plan of the Western Powers, to 



6o Turkey and the Great Nations 

carry out the reforming of Turkey without and 
against Russia, was, as the outcome showed, a sin 
against nature and history. Seldom was a victory 
less magnanimously and more stupidly exploited 
than the truly modest success of Sebastopol. 

It is impossible to forbid a mighty Empire to 
sail the sea before its coast with warships, and it 
is as immoral as was formerly the treaty for the 
closing of the Scheldt, and similar products of 
the older commercial policy. So shameful a con- 
dition is observed by a proud State only so long 
as it must be. With regard to such obligations the 
mot holds good: "The breach of faith is then more 
honourable than the observance. " The blame for 
the announcement of that clause of the Paris 
Treaty falls solely on the shoulders of the silly 
conquerors, who in the intoxication of success 
fancied they could impose the impossible on the 
conquered; the indignant EngHsh cry about 
Russian "breach of faith" found the less echo in 
the right feeling of the European world, since 
everybody knew the Paris Treaty had already a 
long time before been broken in another respect. 
Contrary to the Paris Treaty, the union of the 
Danubian Principalities had been achieved, and 
the Porte positively trampled under foot the 
Humayum hat, the preamble of that Treaty. 

The aim of Petersburg policy has lately been to 
enhance the privileges of the Christian races and 
Churches of the Balkan Peninsula and, where 
possible, to raise those countries to semi-sovereign 



Turkey and the Great Nations 6i 

States. This was already transparently indicated 
in that Gortchakof memorandum of 1867, which 
demands the "co-existence par allele'' of the 
Rayah peoples, and is still clearer in Russia's 
attitude during the Bulgarian Church dispute. 
The Russian Court kept formerly always on 
terms of good friendship with the Patriarch of 
Byzantium; it has now eagerly encouraged the 
separation of the Bulgarian National Church from 
the Patriarchate. It no longer makes a formal 
claim of solely representing the Orthodox in 
Turkey, but it is now, as it was formerly, the only 
Power that can do anything for the Rayahs. Of 
course the people in Petersburg have their arriere- 
pensee: they desire, if possible, a powerless group 
of small States in the Balkans, so that Russian 
influence may alone be dominant there. On that 
account, Russia formerly opposed the creation of 
the independent Kingdom of Greece, and hoped 
far more for the formation of three semi-sovereign 
Principalities at the Southern point of the Penin- 
sula; therefore, also, the union of Moldavia 
and Wallachia ran counter to Petersburg views. 
The root idea of Russian policy is, however, quite 
justified ; apart from the autonomy of the territories, 
there is in very truth no longer any way of secur- 
ing the rights of the Rayahs. And as Russia is 
certainly not in a position to arrange Eastern 
affairs solely according to her will and pleasure, 
the task is laid upon her Western allies to remove 
the sting from the Russian plans. 



62 Turkey and the Great Nations 

Just as the Petersburg Court long ago agreed 
to acknowledge the Kingdom of Greece and the 
Unified Rumanian State, it will also some time or 
other, if Europe requires it, be obliged to allow the 
enlargement of the Kingdom of Greece. Even 
the collapse of Osman rule in Stamboul, which at 
the moment is still quite out of sight, yet will 
assuredly take place presently, cannot fill us with 
blind fright if we calmly weigh the relations of 
the Powers to-day. United Germany, honourably 
reconciled to Austria, is very well able to see that 
this catastrophe, if it must occur, shall occur under 
circumstances which the West can accept. How, 
pray, do the Anglo-maniacs know that a Greco- 
Slav State on the Bosphorus must necessarily fall 
under Russia's influence? That decayed, sucked- 
out Byzantine Society altogether affords within a 
conceivable future no soil for a menacing develop- 
ment of might ; the natural opposition of interests, 
the Greeks' deep hatred for the Russians, would 
be bound to crop up very soon, and European 
diplomacy would assuredly not be disposed to leave 
the field to the Russians alone, there on the Golden 
Horn, where it has contended for many decades 
and devised schemes and played the master. No 
tenable reason is at the root of the theory that the 
destruction of the Osman State must needs level 
the path for that Russian world-empire of which 
the Anglo-maniacs dream. But the great idea 
which Russia represents, in accordance with her 
historic position in the Orient, the re-introduction 



Turkey and the Great Nations 63 

of the Greco-Slav States into the European com- 
munity, may certainly rely upon the future. The 
Nature of things is working for it. Every bloody 
deed in the Sultan's Palace, and every prosperous 
voyage of daring Greek shipowners, works into 
the hands of that idea. The Turkish apple of the 
Hesperides is already beginning to plague Europe 
with its odour ; the day must come when the rotten 
fruit shall fall to earth. The Petersburg Court 
has no occasion to endanger an assured future 
by premature steps; it may quietly say: We can 
wait. 

England, however, cannot wait. A policy which 
tries, after the manner of Prince Metternich, to up- 
hold only what exists, because it exists, lives from 
hand to mouth ; it requires loud comedy from time 
to time in order to show the world that it is really 
still alive and knows how to defend threatened 
Europe from imaginary dangers. Four points of 
view in especial seem to guide this wretched policy. 
People living in the lucky aloofness of the wealthy 
island have still preserved an obsolete conception 
of European balance, and torment their brains with 
nightmares which have lost all raison d'etre since 
the Italian and the German revolutions. They 
worry themselves about the Mediterranean sea- 
fortresses, and do not perceive that England's 
incomparable merchant service is bound to main- 
tain the upper hand in the Mediterranean even if 
those positions return to their natural masters — a 
trend of events which, moreover, is still at a mea- 



64 Turkey and the Great Nations 

sureless distance from us. They want to uphold 
the Osman Empire at any cost, because the Turks* 
ludicrous trade-policy has opened a boundless 
hunting-ground to the English merchant. Us- 
ing some foresight, they could surely say to them- 
selves that the restoration of tolerable political 
conditions in the Balkan Peninsula is bound 
necessarily to revive the commerce of those 
countries, and consequently to confer advantage 
on the chief commercial people in the world. 
Monopolists, however, have ever preferred a small 
capital with big gains to moderate gains with 
bigger capital. Glad of the momentary benefit, 
they swear again to Palmerston's expression: 
*'I talk with no statesman who does not regard 
the maintenance of Turkey as a European neces- 
sity," and they forget that the same Palmerston 
declared in his last years: "We shall not draw 
the sword for a corpse a second time. " 

They are afraid in London that Russia might 
dominate the Suez Canal from Stamboul, and 
they want, by means of favour shown to the 
Caliph, to keep the Moslems of Hindustan in a 
good humour and protect them against Muscovite 
wiles. He who does not regard the Russian 
campaign in Central Asia through the pessimistic 
glasses of M. Vambery, but with independent 
judgment, will indeed ask why England should 
worry about it at all. That Russia should casually 
pocket the 200,000,000 heads of the Anglo-Indian 
Empire is surely but a bad joke, which finds only 



Turkey and the Great Nations 65 

a few believers in Europe because the boundless 
distances of Asia appear so insignificant on our 
maps. Both Governments have, rather, much to 
fear, yonder in the East, a common foe, the fanatic- 
ism of Islam, and even fifteen years ago, had there 
been good- will on both sides, an understanding as 
to the boundaries of their dominions was not 
unthinkable. To-day it is hardly still possible. 
It was for England to suggest such an understand- 
ing, since her position in Asia is incomparably more 
severely threatened than Russia's new possessions. 
What would a defeat in that barbarous country 
matter to the Russians? They would lose a few 
hundred square miles and win them back a few 
years later from the safe back-blocks. For 
England, on the contrary, a successful revolt in 
the East Indies might have fearful consequences. 
It would indeed not break Old England's might — 
the power of the Sea- Queen would remain even 
then respect- worthy — but it would deal her a hard 
blow and cause a heavy loss to human civilization, 
because the Indian countries would be sacrificed 
to unknowable civil wars. The task of controlling 
hundreds of millions of natives with a few thou- 
sand Europeans is immeasurably difficult; the 
most important interests imposed it upon the 
English Government fearlessly to seek good re- 
lations with its inconvenient Northern neighbour. 
But England's statesmen and people, obsessed 
by the fixed idea of a Russian world-empire, 
have outrivalled each other in making this under- 



66 Turkey and the Great Nations 

standing difficult. Every fresh conquest of the 
Russians was greeted by the English Press with 
the bitterness of hate. If England sent an agent 
to Kashgar, where, rightly speaking, he had no 
business to be, it was quite correct; but if Russia 
sent an agent to China, where he likewise had no 
business to be, the whole of England would cry 
out about the unscrupulousness of the Muscovites. 
Not only the independent Press, but also more 
influential circles indulged in these laments, 
which were little suited to the ancient manliness 
of the English character. General Rawlinson^s 
well-known book, which could hardly have ap- 
peared without the silent consent of the Supreme 
Indian authority, positively wallows in the art of 
painting the devil on the wall. So they kept 
continually shouting out to the world that the 
Russians were to be feared as enemies, and the 
perils of the position were increased thereby. 
England's rule in India depends entirely on her 
moral prestige; as soon as the inhabitants of the 
East Indies begin to suspect that a dreaded foe of 
their British masters is approaching the Indus with 
superior forces, the bonds of obedience may easily 
be loosened. The fear of Russia, openly shown by 
the Britons, compelled the Petersburg Court itself 
to an unfriendly and occasionally treacherous 
policy. It went its way unmoved, and now and 
then consoled the anxious neighbouring Power with 
dishonest declarations. Without unfair suspicion, 
one may to-day venture the theory that the Asiatic 



Turkey and the Great Nations 67 

conquests are not merely an end in themselves 
for the Russian Government, but also the means 
towards another end: it proposes to make un- 
pleasantness for the English in the East Indies 
if the fall of the Turkish Empire should lead to a 
world-war. 

Thus do English statesmen wobble between 
obsolete prejudices and anxious cares; self-interest 
and a feeling of inward elective affinity make 
them seem to the Turks their only true friends. 
Their latest deed, the deposition of the Sultan, was 
a very clever chess-move, nothing more; it only 
proved that England is seriously minded to 
maintain her influence on the Bosphorus — for who 
could genuinely believe the edifying fairy-tale 
that Czar Alexander wanted to break the union of 
the three Emperors, and was only prevented from 
conquering Byzantium by England's vigilance? 
But we seek in vain for a creative idea in the Tory 
Government. It hardly puts the question to 
itself, whether the existing status is worthy and 
capable of support; it feels ashamed how low 
England's renown has sunk during the last decades, 
and bestirs itself to call a halt to history by loud- 
shouting demonstrations. Can so sterile a policy 
expect alHes among the Great Powers.? 

Only once did France really carry out a clear, 
definite, good French policy in the Orient: at the 
time of its fights against the House of Austria. 
The Turks then served her as natural allies. 
Since the end of the seventeenth century another 



68 Turkey and the Great Nations 

path was entered on : France desired a protectorate 
over the Latins in the Osman Empire, and eagerly 
favoured the Jesuits' propaganda. This ill- 
starred policy could only slightly enhance the 
prestige of the French Court, considering the small 
number of Catholics in Turkey, and entangle it in 
incessant quarrels with Russia, which has always 
followed the zeal of the Latins for conversion in the 
East with vigilant suspicion. After much waver- 
ing, Napoleon III then exercised for some years 
a guardianship over the Sublime Porte. After his 
fall, the Marquis de Vogiie tried yet again to carry 
on a Catholic policy at Pera, and found his master 
in Prince Bismarck. Since then France has taken 
little part in the great diplomatic struggle on the 
Bosphorus. We all know what hope slumbers in 
every Frenchman's deepest heart, but we also 
know that France does not desire the war of 
revenge at the present moment. Marshal Mac- 
Mahon admits that the reformation of the army 
is not yet quite complete, Duke Decazes has given 
many proofs of cautious moderation, but the 
nation longs to enjoy yet a few years of economic 
splendour, which, shaming their conqueror, they 
have newly won by marvellous activity. For those 
purposes which alone are valuable to the French, 
for the conquest of Belgium or a piece of the left 
bank of the Rhine, the English fleet can be of little 
use to them ; without Austria or Russia as an ally 
they do not wish to venture upon the war of re- 
venge. France is, besides, a Mediterranean Power, 



Turkey and the Great Nations 69 

and cannot desire the excessive growth of English 
influence in the south-east. This latter considera- 
tion is also decisive of Italy's attitude. The 
reasons which once led Count Cavour into the war 
against Russia have long vanished with the 
unification of Italy. The young kingdom is on 
good terms with the three Eastern Powers, and 
will take care not to give up that assured position 
for the love of a few English pessimists. 

So long as the Alliance of the three Emperors 
lasts, there is nothing to fear as to European 
peace, and the prospects of the Alliance are still, 
as ever, without a shadow. It is of course intelli- 
gible that Vienna is visited by a confusion of the 
most diverse endeavours ; all the numberless contra- 
dictions of parties and races which are embraced 
in the Imperial State are being stirred up by the 
Eastern Question. The Poles, and a portion of 
the Ultramontanes with them, desire war with 
Russia; Dictator Langiewicz is intriguing in Con- 
stantinople, and Cardinal Ledochowsky is airing 
racial hatred at the Holy Seat. In the same 
direction are the operations of those Old Conser- 
vatives, who even now preach the ancient Metter- 
nich maxim that Austria and the Porte are united 
in solidarity. But a dense mass of moderate 
German Liberals are blowing the same horn; 
these people think they are showing their freedom 
of thought by the well-known and brilliant remarks 
about free England and the barbarians of the 
East. On the other hand, at least four parties 



^o Turkey and the Great Nations 

demand the support of the rebellion and conquests 
to the south of the Danube. The Czechs, Serbs, 
and Croatians wish to aid their brethren in the 
South; an ambitious military party demands, 
amid the applause of zealous Great-Austrians, a 
consolation prize for the losses of recent years; 
a fraction of the Ultramontanes wishes to conquer 
Slav country in order to drive the hated Magyars 
into a corner; finally, there are imfortunately also 
a few blinded German enthusiasts who would like 
to enlarge the Imperial State in the East, so that 
its western half might fall to the German Empire. 
Those, however, who, like us Germans in the 
outer Empire, earnestly desire the maintenance of 
the Austrian Monarchy and its dual constitution, 
must perceive also that Austria to-day neither 
can nor may annex anything in Turkey. There is 
only conquest yonder in the south-east which 
would in itself be advantageous to the Danubian 
Empire: Rumania. That precious conquest was 
once attainable in Prince Eugene's great days; it 
might perhaps even have been achieved by a bold 
policy during the Crimean War; to-day it is quite 
impossible, owing to the unanimous refusal of 
the newly-unified Rumanian people, which can 
always lean on Russia for support. The great 
hour has unfortunately passed, as once passed the 
right moment for the Germanizing of Bohemia, 
and so many other alluring opportunities in 
Austrian history. The estuary of the Danube 
is now as unattainable for Austria as the delta 



Turkey and the Great Nations 71 

of the Rhine for Germany. Any other section of 
the Tiirkish dominion, however, would be a 
*' Greek gift" for modern Austria. The bound- 
aries of the Monarchy towards the south-east 
are, even though inconvenient, yet tenable, and 
by no means so unnatural as they appear on a 
map. The Dalmatian coast looks towards the 
West, has belonged for thousands of years to the 
Adriatic- Italian world, and has hardly any inter- 
course with the pathless mountain-chain of the 
back-blocks. The annexation of Bosnia would 
strengthen the centrifugal Slavic elements, and 
expose the Empire to the danger of dismember- 
ment; the crude masses could not be allowed 
to take any part either in the Vienna or the 
Pesth Reichstag, and the fantastic experiment of 
a triad-policy would have to be tried, although 
it has been quite sufficiently shown how difficult 
it is to maintain even dualism after ten years* 
experience. 

The task is imposed upon us Germans to uphold 
the Three Emperors' Alliance by conciliation and 
mediation. We once honestly tried to gain a 
respite for the life of the Turkish Empire; the 
only reform in Turkey which has been something 
of a success, the rebuilding of the army, is the work 
of Prussian officers. Yet we cannot shut our eyes 
to her impending doom. We find no reason to 
accelerate the catastrophe at all. A nation 
which has just suffered so severely for its unity 
may well say without selfishness: Non omnia 



^2 Turkey and the Great Nations 

possumus omnes; it is not for us, but for the 
South Slavs, to set the ball rolling. But we, too, 
dare not remain inactive, and, least of all, console 
ourselves with the dull, pessimistic comfort that 
the Czar's Empire may, in God's name, grow till it 
bursts. We want lasting, endurable conditions in 
the Peninsula, which may pacify that part of the 
world, and so we want no new foreign domination, 
certainly no annexations, either Austrian or 
Russian. All good Germans are united in this 
resolution, because what may in any way en- 
danger Austria's existence, is a blow at our own 
Empire. 

Our Government has first pledged itself to 
guarantee Count Andrassy's Reform proposals. 
There is no change in them, even though, owing 
to the new Sultan on the Bosphorus, the Three 
Emperors' Alliance has been obliged to grant a 
longer respite to the new Government. The 
Andrassy programme touches with a sure hand 
the rawest spots in the Rayah's circumstances. 
Germany's prestige is also concerned that the 
Porte may not again, as in the case of so many 
other proposals, get rid of these well-considered 
and moderate ones with empty phrases. If she 
does this, or if she proves incapable of fulfilling 
her promises, the three Eastern Powers, if they do 
not wish to seem ludicrous to the whole world, can 
hardly avoid going further and demanding serious 
pledges for the abolition of an anarchic state of 
affairs which is gradually becoming intolerable to 



Turkey and the Great Nations 73 

all her neighbours, and particularly to Austria. 
That they can thus act with an honourable 
unanimity seems almost certain ; the quiet hope of 
the French, of EngHsh Russophobes, and of the 
Ultramontanes for the break-up of the Three 
Emperors' Alliance has poor prospects so long as 
the Republic exists in France and the Magyars 
guide Austria's foreign policy. 

Only a seer could determine beforehand the 
course of events during the next months. The 
growing agitation in Servia, and the energetic 
preparations in the Mediterranean, point indeed 
to serious events. On the other hand, all the 
Powers, especially Russia, are filled with a lively 
desire for peace; the Czar's Empire shrinks from 
the incalculable disorders which an outburst of 
Mohammedan fanaticism threatens to create 
everywhere in Asia; the Powers' profound mutual 
suspicion disables each force by an opposing force 
yonder in the East. It therefore seems possible 
that Turkish affairs will still, for a time, drag along 
sluggishly and deplorably, and highly probable 
that the fate of the capital will not be decided in the 
nearest future, because this question is in fact 
regarded by all the Powers as not yet ripe for 
settlement. We have had very unpleasant experi- 
ences of England's friendship since the Seven 
Years' War; Russian policy would have to commit 
unheard-of follies for Germany to think of drop- 
ping the hand of her tried friend in order to throw 
herself into the arms of a faithless ally, dominated 



74 Turkey and the Great Nations 

by obsolete opinions. In the Eastern Question 
Russia needs us more than we her; therefore 
an astute, strong German policy has nothing to 
fear from the Russian alliance. 



GERMANY AND THE ORIENTAL 
QUESTION 

BERLIN, 

J 5th Dec, i8y6, 

"HP HAT changed aspect" of Oriental complica- 
1 tions, about which Prince Bismarck did not 
wish to pronounce an opinion in the Imperial Diet, 
seems to all appearances to be arising very rapidly. 
The mobilization of the Army of the South is com- 
pleted, the Turkish army is ready to hold the line of 
the Danube, and perhaps to cross it. Optimists 
still place reliance upon the incontestable per- 
sonal love for peace of Czar Alexander, or upon 
the arts of mediation of the European Conference ; 
and, truly, in the chaos of the Oriental Question 
the imexpected has often become possible. But 
probability far rather presages the near outbreak 
of war. Russia cannot abandon the demand for 
serious reforms in favour of the Rayah people 
without a humiliation which a healthy State 
accepts only from the sword of the victor. The 
Porte will not grant those reforms, as, after all the 
horrors of the past summer, they can only be 
carried through under the protection of Christian 

75 



76 Germany and the East 

weapons. It is impossible that the God-inspired 
Bashi-bazoiik, after having ripped open the Bul- 
garian mother and sold her children as slaves, 
should now of his own accord live with the survivors 
of his victims as a peaceful citizen on the footing 
of equal rights. But an occupation of the rebel- 
lious provinces, be it through the Moscow "Gia- 
our" or through another Christian Power, appears 
an unbearable disgrace to the dignity of valiant 
Islam, the last moral power of the Ottoman 
State. The differences have become irreconcilable, 
and, however much the West of Europe wishes for 
peace, the mediation proposals of the Conference 
can, after all that has happened, only delay the 
inevitable catastrophe for a short time, and render 
intolerable the paralysing tension which oppresses 
that part of the world. 

The worst of all political sins — the hesitation 
between wishing and not wishing to do a thing — 
has come out in an ugly manner in every one of 
the periodical explosions of the Oriental Question, 
but never in worse form than last year. All 
Powers immediately concerned in the heritage 
of the "Sick Man" stood helplessly between the 
appreciation of the fact that the present state of 
affairs was impossible and the fear of the incalcu- 
lable consequences of a firm decision. Compared 
with the hesitation of the neighbouring Powers the 
simple barbarity of Ottoman politics seems almost 
worthy of respect. By the atrocities in Bulgaria, 
as well as by the dismal proceedings which accom- 



Germany and the East 77 

panied the two changes of dynasty, the Porte has 
only proved afresh that, in spite of the Peace of 
Paris, she can never become a European Power. 
She has carried on a pitiful war with a superiority 
of excellent regular troops, yet she had the 
worst in the fight with the brave little nation of 
Montenegro, and defeated the Servian militia only 
after a resistance of many months. On the whole, 
however, she succeeded in maintaining her posses- 
sions, and with prouder feelings, and greater con- 
fidence than for a long time past, the Turks look 
to-day upon the undefeated standard of the Half- 
Moon. But once again, and not without success, 
the old Turkish adage Vv^as applied to the Prankish 
Courts: *'To hurry is the work of the devil, to 
delay is the work of God ; " the well-known cheerful 
promises of coming constitutional splendour for 
the happy grande famille ottomane sufficed to 
once more keep the Cabinets in suspense for a 
time. It was a hand-to-mouth life, without the 
slightest vestige of a fruitful statesmanlike thought. 
The Porte, however, always knew what she 
wanted. Not the same boast applies to the 
attitude of the most closely-interested European 
Powers. When defending the rights of the Ra- 
yah the Russian Court did only what its historic 
position demanded. Its original proposals were 
just and temperate, and its firm adhesion to the 
Triple AlHance proved that in Petersburg a lesson 
had been learned from the experiences of the 
Crimean War. But with a disturbance of the 



78 Germany and the East 

general policy of the Great Powers, through the with- 
drawal of England and the complications caused 
by the change of Turkish dynasty, Russian diplo- 
macy for a time lost its firm grip. Those who 
hear the grass grow may, of course, presume that 
the restless little Piedmont of the South Slavs, 
which always was a thorn in the eye of the Russian 
Cabinet, has intentionally been forced into war 
for its own destruction. Far nearer the truth 
is the assumption that two parties fought an 
indecisive battle at the Court of St. Petersburg. 
The Government shrank from war, yet did not 
dare oppose the mighty Pan-Slavist movement 
which swept the country; it warned the Serbs of 
the outbreak, yet did not morally support it — 
nay, even permitted, contrary to international 
law, the massing of Russian officers and soldiers. 
The temptation was truly very great; in face of 
a wild popular effervescence an absolute despot 
is often less powerful than a constitutional king, 
who can rely upon an intelligent parliamentary 
majority. How angry we Germans once were with 
the Crown of Prussia when peace had been con- 
cluded with Denmark, and subsequently, in 
accordance with treaties, her officers were recalled 
from the Schleswig-Holstein Army! But what- 
ever may be said as an excuse, Russia's policy was 
unworthy of a Great Power ; it resembled more the 
art of evasion forced upon Count Cavour by the 
weakness of his country than the conscious straight- 
forwardness of Prussian policy during our battles 



Germany and the East 79 

for unity. Even in the circles of unbiassed people, 
the concealed war in Servia has severely shaken 
their confidence in Russia's honest intentions, 
and it was lucky for the Russians themselves 
that the Servian enterprise ended in failure. 
Since then the Court at Petersburg resorted to 
simpler and therefore more effective measures. 
By its ultimatum the Turks were forced to immedi- 
ately arrest their triumphal march. Thousands 
of beheaded Servians lay on the battle-field around 
Alexinatz; the whole country vibrated in terror 
of Turkish arms; the more wonderful appeared to 
the people the power of the White Czar, who by 
one word called "halt" to the terrible foe. The 
prestige of Russia amongst the Rayahs is to-day 
firmer established than ever. For a time, the 
Russian Crown seemed to disappear behind the 
revolutionary powers of Pan-Slavism; now it 
apparently makes efforts to expiate the fault it has 
committed and to keep in check those elementary 
forces. The emphatic declaration of Czar Alex- 
ander that he did not wish for conquests is more 
deserving of credence than the assurances of his 
ancestress Catherine. After a glorious reign he 
may well expect that the world places confidence 
in his word, especially as he did not indulge in 
vague wishes for peace, but frankly declared that 
the necessity for war to secure the rights of the 
Rayah might possibly arise. For the moment, 
the labours of St. Petersburg diplomacy are di- 
rected towards securing the assent of all Powers, 



8o Germany and the East 

including England, to the reform proposals, and to 
secure for Russian policy in case of war incontest- 
able legal rights, so that Russia either should 
appear as executor of European will, or could 
not be accused of arbitrary action; and to all 
appearances the old faithful ally of the Russians 
— the infatuated conceit of the Porte — will grant 
them at least the latter advantage. For, how- 
ever mildly the Conference may decide, and it 
may even abandon the idea of occupation, the 
actual removal of Ottoman suzerainty in Bosnia 
and Bulgaria is inevitable if the whole reform work 
is not again to be mere jugglery, and the conceit 
of the Mohammedans will not admit such imputa- 
tions. So Russia, after many waverings and mis- 
takes, has returned to a clear and logical policy; 
and to-day it still appears to us laymen that two 
utterly different efforts of Russian diplomacy 
worked side by side. Pan-Slavism is beaten pro 
tern, by the moderate policy of the Czar, but he 
reserves to himself to again come forward with its 
covetous wishes as soon as fortune of war favours 
the Russian flag. Of English politics, however, 
not the cleverest brain can say what its object 
has really been during the whole course of proceed- 
ings. The Tory party was very minutely in- 
formed as to the hopeless situation of the Rayahs. 
If, therefore, according to national superstition, 
we considered the existence of Turkey a European 
■ — or, better, a British — necessity, it should not 
have left the representation of South Slav interests 



Germany and the East 8i 

to the Russian Court; it should have exerted its 
great influence on the Bosphorus in order to 
enforce at the right time the adoption of vigorous 
reforms. Instead, it tumbled from one contra- 
diction into the other. Reluctantly it consented to 
Count Andrassy's memorial, only to break away, 
four months later, from the Berlin Convention, 
which, after all, was simply supposed to carry on 
the plans of the memorial. It never occurred to 
the Tory party to come forward with a counter- 
proposal. England's attitude was the final cause 
of the Servian War, because, without evident 
discord between the Great Powers, the Petersburg 
Court could undoubtedly have kept in check the 
Pan-Slavist agitation. 

To posterity alone it will become apparent what 
part the British Ambassador has played at both 
dynasty changes at the Golden Horn; but it is 
certain that confidence in England's friendship has 
encouraged the Turks to carry on their frivolous 
game with the Powers. As a champion of Allah, 
Admiral Drummond was greeted in the Mosque 
of Stamboul by the enthusiastic softas] the men 
of war in the Bay of Besika gave encouragement 
to the Porte to direct all their might against the 
South Slavs. Meanwhile, a peculiarly vague 
movement started amongst the British pubHc. 
Here and there the conviction gained ground that 
the strictly conservative Oriental policy of Old 
England was played out; it was noticed with deep 
regret that the fanaticism of Islam, under the pro- 



82 Germany and the East 

tection of bigoted England, tortured its Christian 
victims; added to which were the party hatred 
of the Whigs, the reHgious zeal of High-Church 
theologians, the philanthropic talk of weak-minded 
individuals, and the ardent desire for peace of 
those Manchester men who, already in the time of 
Richard Cobden, favoured the good-natured view 
that Constantinople as a Russian provincial town 
would enjoy a considerable cotton importation, 
and consequently unmixed happiness. Alarmed by 
this wave of public opinion, the Cabinet, after 
four months, again gave way, and in September 
expressed its adherence to the principles of the An- 
drassy memorial, which previously had been aban- 
doned in May. Then, however, Benjamin Disraeli, 
boasting and threatening, extolled the inexhaust- 
ible expedients of Great Britain, and, as we are 
credibly assured. Lord SaHsbury to-day makes 
the most emphatic appeals to the stubbornness 
of the Porte, whilst he, at the same time, in equally 
decided manner declares himself opposed to the 
occupation of Bulgaria, and thereby renders void 
all his admonitions. The Porte believes that it 
can count upon England's friendship under all 
circumstances, and that is why she does not desire 
an agreement with Russia. The diplomacy of 
the Tory party reveals a type of complete help- 
lessness; hence also their reluctance to convene 
Parliament. Should, however, war break out in 
the East it would soon become apparent that the 
majority of the British public does not endorse the 



Germany and the East 83 

demobilization meetings of the Whigs. The na- 
tion has not yet got over the experiences in the 
Crimean War; it beHeves that it defends the East 
Indies on the Bosphorus, and we might easily find 
that England is following the bad example given in 
Servia, and, by secretly supporting the Turkish 
forces, commencing a hidden war against Russia. 
Who can say where this may lead to? The fertile 
mind of Benjamin Disraeli, however, apparently 
thinks of yet another possibility: the faithful 
friend of the Turks is ever ready to stick the key of 
the Suez Canal in his pouch should the house 
of the "Sick Man" collapse, and in this way would 
strengthen for all time British supremacy in the 
Mediterranean. The only thing that is clear in 
this peculiar policy is that it is incalculable. 

Nor, unfortunately, has Austria's Oriental policy 
so far had fruitful results. True, the two leading 
nations of the monarchy — Germans and Magyars 
— have a presentiment that the Triple Alliance 
alone can save the country from the dangers of the 
Pan-Slavist propaganda; but intelligent judgment 
is always being upset either by greedy desire for 
conquests or by passionate outbursts of blind Slav 
hatred. A great number of Vienna newspapers 
play the sad part of Imperial Turkish Court 
journals. When the Cisleithanian Parliament 
discussed the Oriental Question, political dilettant- 
ism celebrated its Saturnalia. A whole pattern- 
card of invertebrate plans was displayed, and Mr. 
Giskra, Ofenheim's patron, gave proof of his dar- 



S4 Germany and the East 

ing genius by sweetly suggesting putting up the 
yellow-black boundary posts on the coast of the 
-^gean Sea. An outspoken popular opinion exists 
only in one German race of the Monarchy, i.e., 
among the Transylvania Saxons. These, the best 
German Austrians, who at the same time are the 
most faithful adherents to the country as a whole, 
are at heart completely on the side of the Rayah 
people, because they see in advance that the 
creation of small South Slav States on Hungary's 
boundaries would tame the coarse insolence of 
the Magyar Chauvinists, and would compel the 
Hungarian nobility to behave fairer than hitherto 
towards their German and Slav citizens. Fanatics 
of Magyardom, on the other hand, do the impos- 
sible in the adoration of their Turkish cousins. 
The Budapest youth hurl their rhetorical thunder- 
bolts against the venomous pestilential breath of 
the Muscovite Colossus, and the enlightened ad- 
mirers of general public liberty pilgrimage to Ofen 
to the grave of Guel-Baba, the holy father of the 
Mohammedans. It is as if at any price they 
wished to prove to us Europeans of the West that 
the Magyars consider themselves Asiatics of the 
North. In spite of blustering and threatening 
from all directions, nobody has either the courage 
or the real intention of overthrowing Count An- 
drassy . That in the midst of all these complications 
the Count has, at any rate, firmly maintained the 
Triple Alliance is a fresh proof of his diplomatic 
cleverness. But, owing to this confused pell-mell 



Germany and the East 85 

of opinions, the striking force of the Monarchy 
is unmistakably being weakened; and should war 
break out in the East, Austria cannot easily, 
at least at the beginning, do more than main- 
tain a useless neutraHty. If, amongst all the 
Great Powers, Germany alone has unerringly 
maintained a firm and dignified attitude, we owe 
the advantage above all to our geographical situ- 
ation. It is due to Prince Bismarck's fame that 
he clearly recognizes the tasks devolving upon our 
world-position, and that, uninfluenced by alluring 
temptations, he makes no step beyond. Our new 
Empire does not consider itself called upon to 
constantly keep the world on the qui vive by rais- 
ing new questions in the charlatanical fashion 
of Napoleon. Germany aims at a real balance of 
power, and does not even wish to play the part of 
primus inter pares ^ but is ready to remain modestly 
in the second line as long as her interests are not 
immediately interfered with. The complaints of 
the EngHsh and Turcophile Press regarding the 
unbending stiffness of Herr von Werther only 
prove that our Ambassador on the Bosphorus con- 
scientiously fulfils his duty and quietly rejects the 
lead which some people in some respects would so 
much like to foist upon him. 

The speech of the Imperial Chancellor said 
nothing about the present state of affairs of 
German politics which any impartial observer 
might not have said himself; yet it freed the pre- 
judiced and anxious masses from many a grievous 



86 Germany and the East 

doubt, and even forced the outside world to 
recognize the peaceful and moderate attitude of 
the much-calumniated Empire. Its chief merit, 
however, lay in the fact that it reminded shifty 
public opinion of the great common duties of 
Christianity. It is not — as the Turcophiles 
reproach us — out of grateful devotion to Russia 
that Germany aimed at the establishment of 
orderly conditions in the Rayah land, but because 
it is the duty of all Christian countries to espouse 
the cause of their co-religionists. Another re- 
proach on the part of Turk admirers the Chancellor 
has not even thought it worth while referring to, 
viz., the assertion that fear of a Franco- Russian 
Alliance should dictate the course of German 
diplomacy. This alliance has now for two genera- 
tions been the pet idea of all political visionaries 
in France ; Lamartine named it le cri de la nature. 
But the same thing happens with it as with the 
famous race war between Slavs and Germans, 
which has always been predicted by cocksure 
prophets as an inevitable necessity and is yet never 
realized. For the present all justification is lack- 
ing for such radical shifting of power on the 
Continent. It is extremely unlikely that Czar 
Alexander would wantonly reject the hand of his 
trusted German ally in order to combine with 
Ultramontane and Republican France. The sober 
heads of French diplomatists know very well that 
all endeavours in this direction are but labour lost. 
As long as the Court of St. Petersburg aspires 



Germany and the East 87 

only to securing the rights of the Rayah it may 
count on Germany's friendship, even if it should 
become necessary to take up arms. This implies 
that our Empire cannot tolerate Russian territorial 
conquests in the Balkan Peninsula. Russian 
patriots believe they are very modest in their 
wish to bring the estuaries of the Danube into 
Russia's hands, and thus aboHsh the last clause 
still remaining from the hated Peace of Paris. 
But this modest wish is utterly unacceptable to 
Germany. Austria has unfortunately irrevocably 
lost the opportunity of taking possession of the 
estuaries of her river; it however remains a ques- 
tion of life and death for the Empire of the Danube 
that its most important line of commimication 
should not be impaired by another State superior 
in power, and Germany is immediately concerned 
in the existence of Austria. Rumania, however 
unfinished she appears to-day, can play a happy 
part in the peace of the world, for she forms a 
barrier between Russia and the South Slav world. 
Neither Austria nor Russia must consent to the 
destruction of this young State. When Russia, 
in peace time, advanced from Adrianople to the 
Sulina she went beyond her natural sphere of 
power; the removal of this usurpation was one of 
the few real merits of the Paris Conventions, and, 
fortunately, Germany possesses to-day a con- 
stitutional right to prohibit the return of that 
unnatural condition. As everybody knows, the 
lower part of the Danube is under the suzerainty 



88 Germany and the East 

of a European Commission, to which Germany 
likewise sends a delegate; Russia cannot enlarge 
her territory there without permission of the six 
Powers, and that permission will never be granted. 
Now if this insignificant extension of Russian 
frontiers is incompatible with German interests, it 
is self-evident that the higher aspirations of Pan- 
Slavists would meet with decided opposition on 
the part of our Empire. The famous expression, 
Constantinople c'est V empire du monde, appears to 
us practical Germans of course as a Napoleonic 
phrase, but all the same the Bosphorus remains 
a highly important strategic position. To sub- 
jugate that natural heritage of the Greeks to the 
Russian Empire would be tantamount to sub- 
stituting a new foreign domination for the Turkish ; 
it would be tantamount to transferring the centre 
of gravity of Muscovite power from territories 
where it has healthy natural roots, thus creating 
morbid conditions which would be no less perni- 
cious to Russia than to us. A free passage through 
the Dardanelles is a just claim on the part of the 
Russians, and Germany will surely not oppose it 
if Russia has the strength to defend it with the 
sword. Neither does the formation of a Bosnian 
or Bulgarian State run counter to our interests, 
and as the aversion of the Magyars and German 
Austrians to the neighbourhood of South Slav 
minor Powers merely arises from an uncertain 
frame of mind, it will, in view of accomplished facts, 
also be difficult in time to come to resist Austria's 



Germany and the East 89 

opposition. But it is the fundamental idea of 
the Triple Alliance that great changes in the East 
are not to be accomplished without the consent of 
the Allies. The weakened and wearied Prussia 
of the 'twenties once spoke the decisive word 
at the Peace of Adrianople. Germany, now 
powerful, can still less think of permitting the 
Russians the sole regulation of Turkish affairs. 
If the Russian Crown, with the silent consent of 
the two other Imperial Powers, should start the 
war, it will find out that its allies claim for them- 
selves, and for the other European Powers, the 
right of co-decision at the conclusion of peace. 
The intimate ties which unite the Petersburg 
Court with that of Berlin are a guarantee that 
on the Neva, the limits which Germany's friend- 
ship cannot exceed have been known for ever so 
long. 

The securing of rights for Oriental Christians, 
whether by serious administrative reforms or by 
the establishment of South Slav States without 
disturbance of the peace in the West of Europe, 
and without aggrandizement of the Russian Em- 
pire — these are the aims of German diplomacy, 
and up to now the preservation of peace, at 
least, has succeeded beyond all expectation. It 
may rely upon the consent of the huge majority 
of the German nation. Since the repugnant 
spectacle of the Servian War, an alarming con- 
fusion of ideas seems to be spreading in our Press ; 
only the Government-inspired papers and a few 



90 Germany and the East 

respectable Liberal organs in Berlin, in Suabia, 
and the towns of the Hansa still preserve impartial 
judgment. This complete ignorance of the Euro- 
pean balance of power, which from olden times 
was a special peculiarity of German Radicalism, 
is again revealed in the senseless phraseology 
of Berlin democratic journals; the Press of the 
Ultramontanes preaches wild hatred against 
schismatic Russia, the tamer of Catholic Poland, 
and unfortunately many Liberal papers also chime 
in this party-biassed chorus, as, for instance, the 
Koelnische and the Augsburger Allgemeine, the two 
papers most read abroad. Not to wish to forget 
anything is a bad habit of the German mind which 
seems closely allied with the highest power of our 
nature, namely, our fate. Even as we of the Pro- 
gressive party number a few members who live 
on old recollections and ancient resentment, so 
there is amongst our publicists many a well- 
meaning man who in a totally changed situation of 
the world adheres to the fear of Russia of 1854. 
Luckily, however, the Press is not public opinion. 
The German nation does not love the Slavs. It 
also knows how intensely we are hated by a con- 
siderable part of our Eastern neighbours, and 
nevertheless it thinks sufficiently Hberally and 
justly not to grudge the Slavs their good right to 
form national States. It has made sufficient ac- 
quaintance in its own struggles for unity with the 
narrow-minded reactionary tendency of present- 
day England, and no more allows itself to be 



Germany and the East 91 

deceived by stale panegyrics about British liberty ; 
it understands very well that we should to-day 
have had to fight a world war had the Empire 
listened to the foolish councils of the Anglomanes. 
No doubt is entertained any more as to the true 
spirit of the German people since the brilliant 
success of the Chancellor's speech; the impression 
of those simple words was so powerful that not 
even the member for "Meppen" dared contradict, 
and even some Radical papers showed half- 
hearted approval. Thus, supported by the will of 
the nation, the German Crown can look forward 
with some calmness to the next acts of the Oriental 
drama. The temperate assurances of the Peters- 
burg Court would — such is the way of the world 
— mean little if Russia could expect to carry its 
standards in quick triumphal march right before 
the walls of Stamboul. Such an easy victory 
of Russian arms is, however, by no means pro- 
bable. It is true that long ago the catchword of 
the "colossus with feet of clay" became a quite 
exploded idea; the Czar's Empire commands a 
mighty power whose efficiency has also increased 
considerably; the railway net has within fifteen 
years extended from 500 to over 7000 versts; the 
bitter lessons of the last Oriental war have been 
taken to heart, and the fortresses of the Balkans 
no longer seem impregnable to modern artillery. 
But the enormous obstacles which this dreary, 
unhealthy country, poor in roads, has at all times 
placed in the way of advancing armies are still 



92 Germany and the East 

the same to-day. Turkey commands to-day the 
Pontus, which was closed to her in 1828, and a 
brave, well- trained army, which will gladly fight 
for the Holy Islam cause against her old sworn 
enemy. The issue of the campaign seems very 
uncertain, and the Courts at Vienna and Berlin 
will hardly have the opportunity to speak a 
momentous word at the right moment should the 
enthusiasm of victory arouse the arrogance of 
Pan- Slavism. 

Every war baffles foresight. It is of course con- 
ceivable that the moral anguish of "English com- 
mercial policy" will, after all, delight the world 
with a fresh " Opium War, " and that the Moham- 
medan cavalry of the Empress of India, accom- 
panied by the blessings of pious clergymen, will 
fight for the Christian Half-Moon. For the time 
being, however, it looks as if the fateful question 
of Oriental politics, the future of Constantinople, 
is not to be decided this time. The Turkish War is 
for Russia an enormous risk. No European knows 
what is going on in the minds of the 8,000,000 
Mohammedan subjects of the White Czar, how 
much the word of the Sheik Islam and the prestige 
of the Caliph are still worth amongst those masses, 
and what consequences an explosion of the fanatic- 
ism of Allah's warriors may have for Russia 
as well as for England's East Indian dominions. 
Even as the Crimean War brought about a decisive 
social upheaval in Russia, a long new Oriental 
War may easily incite the highly dangerous powers 



Germany and the East 93 

of Radical Nihilism fermenting in the half-trained 
Muscovite mind to a savage struggle — not to men- 
tion the uneducated Polish nobility. Many are 
the sore spots of the Czar's Empire. The Em- 
peror's as yet incomplete great work of reform 
needs peace, and the balance in the State Budget 
which is hardly re-established, would infallibly 
be lost in a long war. As a matter of fact, the 
moderate extent of Russian war preparations does 
not point to the intention of dealing a blow at the 
heart of Ottoman Power. Perhaps the country 
is at present not able to use more than 200,000 
men for warfare abroad, and, anyhow, it will have 
to be admitted in St. Petersburg that such an 
army has to-day little chance to reach the town 
of the Comneni from the Pruth. 

Unready and unripe conditions meet us every- 
where in the lands of the Mediterranean. The 
Mediterranean world is aiHng from two great 
evils: the naval supremacy of England and the 
irretrievable rottenness of the Ottoman Empire. 
But the young Powers which can oust these 
decrepit Powers are nevertheless in being. The 
Greek people, who by origin and position seem 
called upon to take the best part of the legacy of 
the "Sick Man," have badly neglected their war 
preparations. If the Rumanians may expect, with 
some justification, to gain complete independence 
through the Russian Alliance, Greece in the best of 
cases may only expect to move her frontiers a 
little farther towards the North. Still worse 



94 Germany and the East 

conditions prevail in the West. But if the country 
in the centre of the Mediterranean which possesses 
the most magnificent harbours of the South, and 
which still dominates with its language the trade 
of the Levant — if Italy, formerly mighty at 
sea, again grows conscious of her tasks in the 
world's history — the strange conditions in the 
Mediterranean will again develop in a free and 
natural manner, and nobody can desire this great 
change more sincerely than we Germans, as fate- 
companions of the Italians. Napoleon said the 
first condition of the existence of Italy as an empire 
is for her to become a naval Power. But not even 
the sad event of Lissa has decided the Italians to 
reform their fleet on a big scale; the ambition of 
Roman statesmen at the utmost rises to the 
question as to whether with the collapse of the 
Turkish Empire Tunis could perhaps be conquered. 
In this way, the situation in the South seems in all 
directions unprepared for a great decision. We 
must expect that the present crisis will only break 
a few more stones out of the rickety structure of 
the Turkish Empire without actually destroying 
the building. 

Whichever way the die may be cast, we Ger- 
mans do not swim against the stream of history. 
The principle of intervention has become dis- 
credited since the Holy Alliance wantonly misused 
it; properly applied, however, it maintains its 
value in a society which is conscious of its entirety. 
Turkey has trampled on all the solemn promises 



Germany and the East 95 

which granted her the entrance into our State- 
confederation. Christian Europe must not have 
the right wrested from her to at least gag this 
barbaric Power if as yet it cannot be destroyed, so 
that it may no more endanger the human rights of 
Christian subjects. 



WHAT WE DEMAND FROM FRANCE 

WHEREVER Germans live, as far as the re- 
mote colonies beyond the seas, the flags 
are flying from every window, and the clanging 
of bells and the thunder of cannon are pro- 
claiming victory after victory. All of us know 
that after three more frightful struggles — at 
Metz, at Strassburg, at Paris — the war will 
be gloriously closed. To him who remembers 
at this moment the bitter shame which we 
have hidden in our hearts for so many years 
since the day of Olmutz, it must often appear 
as if all this were a dream. The nation cannot 
rejoice in its victory with its whole heart. The 
sacrifices which that victory demanded were too 
frightful; but the stakes actually paid in the 
bloody game, in which the flower of our German 
youth was to perish in battle against Turcos 
and mercenaries, are ludicrously unlike our 
anticipations. 

Out of our mourning for our fallen heroes rises 
the fixed resolve that we Germans shall fight it out 
to the very end. King William, who has so often 
during these weeks spoken out the word that was in 
all our hearts, has solemnly promised already that 

96 



What We Demand from France 97 

the peace shall be worthy of our sacrifices. At 
such a time the task of the political writer 
is a very modest one. Only a dilettante can 
take the trouble to draw out, in all their de- 
tails, the heads of a peace the preliminary 
conditions of which have not yet become visi- 
ble to statesmen. We do not know in what 
condition our troops, when they enter it, will 
find the morally and politically wasted capital 
of the enemy. We cannot calculate how long 
it may be before the blind rage of the French 
will soften into a temper which will enable us to 
treat with them. We cannot even guess what 
power will govern France after this monstrous 
disloyalty of all parties, disgraceful alike to the 
despot and the people. But one task remains 
for our Press — to bring out the unuttered and 
half-formed hopes which move in every breast 
into clear consciousness, so that, on the con- 
clusion of peace, a firm and intelligent nation- 
al pride may rise in enthusiasm behind our 
statesmen. When Germany last dictated peace 
in Paris, we had reason to lament bitterly 
that the German diplomatists had no such 
support. 

The thought, however, which, after first knock- 
ing timidly at our doors as a shamefaced wish, 
has, in four swift weeks, grown to be the mighty 
war-cry of the nation, is no other than this: 
"Restore what you stole from us long ago; give 
back Alsace and Lorraine." 



98 What We Demand from France 

I 

WHAT WE DEMAND 

Were I to marshal the reasons which make it our 
duty to demand this, I should feel as if the task 
had been set me to prove that the world is round. 
What can be said on the subject was said after the 
battle of Leipzig, in Ernst Moritz Amdt's glorious 
tract, "The Rhine the German river, not the Ger- 
man boundary"; said exhaustively, and beyond 
contradiction, at the time of the Second Peace of 
Paris, by all the considerable statesmen of non- 
Austrian-Germany — by Stein and Humboldt, by 
Miinster and Gagem, by the two Crown Princes 
of Wiirttemberg and Bavaria; and confirmed, since 
that time, by the experience of two generations. 
If a reckless, robber war like this is to cost that 
frivolous people nothing more than a war indem- 
nity, the cynical jesters, who worship chance 
and fortune as the only governing powers among 
the nations, and laugh at the rights of States as 
a dream of kind-hearted ideologues, would be 
proved to be in the right. The sense of justice 
to Germany demands the lessening of France. 
Every intelHgent man sees that that miHtary 
nation cannot be forgiven, even for the economic 
sacrifices of the war, on the payment of the heav- 
iest indemnity in money. Why was it that, before 
the declaration of the war, the anxious cry rang 
through Alsace and Lorraine, "The dice are to 



What We Demand from France 99 

be thrown to settle the destiny of our provinces, ** 
before a single German newspaper had demanded 
the restitution of the plunder? Because the 
awakened conscience of the people felt what 
penalty would have to be paid in the interests of 
justice by the disturber of the peace of nations. 
What is demanded by justice is, at the same 
time, absolutely necessary for our security. Let 
the reader glance at the map, and he will see in an 
instant what a jest it was, what a bitter cynicism, 
to fix such boundaries for Germany, after our 
victorious arms had, twice over, given peace to the 
world ! In the east, the triangle of strong fortresses 
between Vistula and Narew cleaves like a dividing 
wedge between Prussia and Silesia. In the west, 
Strassburg is in the hands of France — the beautiful 
''pass into the Empire," as Henry II of France 
enviously called it three hundred years ago. We 
have seen, for some twenty years, how the whole 
pontoon corps of the French lay in garrison in that 
great gate opening on the Upper Rhine; and we 
have watched them at their summer amusements, 
throwing their bridges of boats over the Rhine as a 
friendly preparation for the German war. The 
railway bridge at Kehl, which is indispensable to 
the commerce of the world, had to be blown up 
at once after the declaration of war. The guns of 
Fort Mortier look menacingly down on the open 
town of Altbreisach, which fell a prey to them once 
before. A little higher, at the Istein Rock, two 
shots from a French outwork would break up the 



loo What We Demand from France 

railway between Freiburg and Upper Germany. 
Such a boundary is intolerable to a proud nation; 
it is a living memory of those days of German 
impotence when the mournful inscription stood 
over the Rhine gate at Altbreisach, "I was the 
prison wall of the Frenchman; now I am his 
gateway and his bridge. Alas, there will soon be 
nothing to confine him left anywhere. " 

At the time of the Second Peace of Paris the 
Crown Prince of Wurttemberg warned us that if 
Germany omitted to secure the German boundaries 
on the Upper Rhine the instinct of self-preserva- 
tion would, sooner or later, unite the Courts of 
South Germany in a new Rhine Confederation. 
Thanks to the growth of Prussia, and to the sound 
patriotic sense of the Princes of Bavaria and 
Baden, the prophecy has not literally come true; 
but it was very far from an empty speech. The 
danger of a new Confederation of the Rhine 
threatened the unprotected South for fifty long 
years. For fifty years have the people of South 
Germany, oscillating between blind admiration 
and passionate hatred, failed, on almost every 
occasion, to maintain that proud reserve towards 
their French neighbours which becomes a great 
people, and which springs only from the conscious- 
ness of assured strength. When our descendants 
look back, out of their great Empire, on our 
struggles, they will doubtless rejoice over the 
unity of spirit we have shown ; but they will shrug 
their shoulders and say. How unready and insecure 



What We Demand from France loi 

was the Germany of our fathers, which overflowed 
with praise and rang with shouts of joy and aston- 
ishment when the Bavarians and the Suabians, in 
one inspired moment, fulfilled their confounded 
duty to their great Fatherland ! 

Every State must seek the guarantees of its 
security in itself alone. The silly fancy, that 
gratitude and magnanimity could secure the 
German countries against a defeated France, has, 
twice over, been its own fearful punishment. What 
German can read without rage the account of 
those peace proceedings at Paris in which victor 
and vanquished exchanged parts, and a respectful 
attention was paid to all the prejudices of France, 
while nobody thought of the feelings of Germany? 
The fortress of Conde had to be left to the French 
for the sake of its name; the conquerors thought 
that it would be cruel to take away a stronghold 
from France which had been named after a 
great Bourbon general. What thanks did we get 
for our magnanimity in 1814? The Hundred 
Days and Waterloo. What gratitude for our 
consideration in 18 15? A steadily growing politi- 
cal demoralization, which gradually destroyed 
every feeling of justice in France; a conviction 
that not only was the Rhine country the property 
of France, but that even those art treasures which 
the conquerors of the world once took from Berlin 
and Venice, from Rome and Danzig, belonged 
of right to the capital of the whole world. If 
the France of 181 5, which still possessed a great 



102 What We Demand from France 

treasure of moral forces, fell back so soon on greedy 
dreams of conquest, what have we to expect from 
the society of the Second Empire, which has lost 
all its faith in the ideal treasures of life in the 
course of the barren party struggles of these many 
years? The nation is our enemy, not this Bona- 
parte, who rather obeyed than led it. For a long 
time to come, the one idea which will inspire the 
fallen State will be revenge for Worth and For- 
bach, revenge for Mars and Gravelotte. For 
the time, peaceful relations founded on mutual 
confidence are impossible. 

It is not sufficient for us now that we should 
feel ourselves able to resist an attack from France 
or even from a European alliance. Our nation in 
arms cannot afford to send its sons forth at any 
moment into such another steeplechase against its 
greedy neighbour. Our military organization has 
no meaning without secure boundaries. The dis- 
tracted world already foresees a whole brood of 
wars springing out of the bloody seed of this. 
We owe it some guarantee of permanent peace 
among the nations, and we shall only give it, so far 
as human strength can, when German guns frown 
from the fortified passes of the Vosges on the 
territories of the Gaulish race, when our armies 
can sweep into the plains of Champagne in a 
few days* march, when the teeth of the wild beast 
are broken, and weakened France can no longer 
venture to attack us. Even Wellington, the good 
friend of the Bourbons, had to allow that France 



What We Demand from France 103 

was too strong for the peace of Europe ; and the 
statesmen of the present day, whenever they have 
reahzed the altered equiUbrium of the Powers, 
will feel that the strengthening of the boundaries 
of Germany contributes to the security of the peace 
of the world. We are a peaceful nation. The 
traditions of the Hohenzollems, the constitution 
of our army, the long and difficult work before us 
in the upbuilding of our united German State, 
forbid the abuse of our warlike power. We need a 
generation devoted to the works of peace to solve 
the difficult but not impossible problem of the 
unification of Germany, while France is driven into 
all the delusions of a policy of adventure by the 
false political ideas which are engrained in her 
luxurious people, by the free-lance spirit of her 
conscript soldiers, and the all but hopeless break- 
up of her domestic life. 

In view of our obligation to secure the peace of 
the world, who will venture to object that the 
people of Alsace and Lorraine do not want to 
belong to us? The doctrine of the right of all the 
branches of the German race to decide on their 
own destinies, the plausible solution of demagogues 
without a fatherland, shiver to pieces in presence 
of the sacred necessity of these great days. These 
territories are ours by the right of the sword, 
and we shall dispose of them in virtue of a higher 
right — the right of the German nation which will 
not permit its lost children to remain strangers to 
the German Empire. We Germans, who know 



104 What We Demand from France 

Germany and France, know better than these 
unfortunates themselves what is good for the 
people of Alsace, who have remained under the 
misleading influence of their French connection 
outside the sympathies of new Germany. Against 
their will we shall restore them to their true 
selves. We have seen with joyful wonder the 
undying power of the moral forces of history, 
manifested far too frequently in the immense 
changes of these days, to place much confidence in 
the value of a mere popular disinclination. The 
spirit of a nation lays hold, not only of the genera- 
tions which live beside it, but of those which 
are before and behind it. We appeal from the 
mistaken wishes of the men who are there to-day 
to the wishes of those who were there before them. 
We appeal to all those strong German men who 
once stamped the seal of our German nature on 
the language and manners, the art and the social 
life of the Upper Rhine. Before the nineteenth 
century closes the world will recognize that the 
spirits of Erwin von Steinbach and Sebastian 
Brandt are still alive, and that we were only obey- 
ing the dictates of national honour when we made 
little account of the preferences of the people who 
live in Alsace to-day. 

During the last two centuries, from the earliest 
beginnings of the Prussian State, we have been 
struggling to liberate the lost German lands from 
foreign domination. It is not the object of this 
national policy to force every strip of German soil 



What We Demand from France 105 

which we ever gave up in the days of our weakness, 
back again into our new Empire. We see without 
uneasiness our people in Switzerland developing 
themselves in peace and freedom unconnected with 
the German State. We do not count on the break- 
ing up of Austria. We have no desire to interfere 
with the separate life of that branch of the German 
stock which has grown up in the Netherlands into a 
small independent nation. But we cannot permit 
a German people, thoroughly degraded and 
debased, to serve against Germany, before our 
eyes, as the vassal of a foreign Power. France 
owes her predominance in Europe solely to our 
having been broken into fragments, and to the 
condition of the other German Powers, and her 
influence is out of all proportion to the real force 
of the GalHc nationality. Who would have ven- 
tured in Luther's days to say that France would 
ever be superior to the warlike Germany which 
he knew? The blood of German nobles flowed in 
torrents in the Huguenot wars of the French; a 
German host, the host of Bemhard von Weimar, 
was the solid centre round which the armies of 
Louis XIV grew up ; it was in our own school that 
the Gaul first learned to defeat us. Who can count 
all the German commanders of the Bourbons, from 
Bassenstein (Bassompierre) down to Marechal de 
Saxe; all the gallant German regiments, Royal 
Alsace, Royal Deux Ponts, Royal Allemand; all 
the teeming hosts of warlike dependants whom 
the treachery of German princes brought under the 



io6 What We Demand from France 

yoke of the foreigner? When those frightful 
robberies began with the Revolution, which at last 
made the determination to fight the French like 
a passion in the blood of our peaceful people, and 
the name of "Frenchman" a synonym in North 
Germany for "enemy," there were thousands of 
Germans still fighting under that enemy's banner. 
Ney and Kellermann, Lefebvre, Rapp, and Kleber 
were counted among the bravest of the brave. 
Even in this war, the best soldiers in the army of 
France are the sturdy German stock of the people 
of Alsace and Lorraine, and the genuine Celtic 
race of Bretagne. 

When Alsace fell under the dominion of the 
French, our Empire lay powerless on the ground. 
The fire of the German spirit, which had once 
flamed through the whole world, seemed extin- 
guished. Germany bowed herself before the 
conquering policy and the victorious culture of 
France. Even so, the French spirit has been 
unable quite to displace the German popular spirit, 
which is even yet as vigorous as it is on the Upper 
Rhine. Since that time the life of our people 
has progressed steadily from strength to strength. 
We are before the French to-day in the number and 
in the density of our population. How often have 
their war orators demanded conquests on the 
Rhine because France has been unable to keep 
peace with the increase in our population, as if 
it were the bounden duty of us Germans to make 
up for Celtic unchastity and impotence by pouring 



What We Demand from France 107 

into their veins, every now and then, fresh Ger- 
man blood? We have broken with the rules of 
their Art, and we can confidently challenge com- 
parison between the free movement of our scienti- 
fic and religious life, and the spiritual culture 
of France. We have succeeded in giving our 
richer and stronger language such a freedom and 
deHcacy that it need no longer fear the rivalry of 
French. Even the advantage of their elder cul- 
ture, the fine tone and polish of social intercourse, 
is passing away, since the wanton audacity of 
the demi-monde of Paris has all but blotted out 
the division lines between honourable and de- 
graded people. We adopted with gratitude the 
ideas of their Revolution, so far as they were 
healthy, and we have built them up on the solid 
basis of a free administration, such as France 
never knew. We are trying earnestly to pro- 
cure, after our own fashion, that priceless bless- 
ing of the unity of the State for which we have 
long envied them; and we believe that we shall be 
able by hard work to make up for the slight 
advantage in their economic life which they 
owe to the Empire and to the situation of their 
country. 

They have felt the weight of our sword, and we 
had challenged the whole world to say which of 
the two combatants bore himself with the greater 
manliness, uprightness, and modesty. At all times, 
the subjection of a German race to France has 
been an unhealthy thing; to-day it is an offence 



io8 What We Demand from France 

against the reason of History — a vassalship of free 
men to half -educated barbarians. 

Sooner or later the hour must have struck which 
would have summoned the growing German 
State to demand security from France for the 
preservation of our nationality in Alsace. It has 
come sooner, and it is more full of promise, than 
any of us had hoped ; and it is our business now to 
draw honourable lines of separation between the 
German and the Gaulish races, and to lay the old 
quarrel for ever. Fifty years ago, Amdt lamented 
that if right was not done in that day, it would be 
very difficult in the future to do it at all. If we 
neglect our duty this time, the French will act 
with all that vigorous and passionate hatred 
which characterizes nations in their decay; and 
will fling themselves on Alsace in the rage of their 
reawakened detestation of Germany, resolute to 
crush out every trace of the German nature. 
It would be to our disgrace as much as to our 
disadvantage, and we should have to draw the 
sword again to protect our own flesh and blood 
from the most hateful of all tyrannies — the 
suppression of its language. 

The wretched outcome of the Second Peace of 
Paris was fruitful of consequences in our domestic 
situation; it greatly contributed to fix in the true 
hearts of our people that embittered discontent 
which was so long the key-note of German political 
feeling. Our victorious armies must not return 
this time with the bitter cry that their priceless 



What We Demand from France 109 

sacrifices have been rewarded with ingratitude. 
What we need above all things is the glad enthusi- 
asm that rises buoyant on the wave of great 
events — the joyful self-consciousness which cannot 
grow freely within the constraining furrows of 
petty Statedom. In all the words of patriotism 
which rang through South Germany before the 
battle of Worth, there never was a doubt expressed 
as to our final victory, but many a one spoke of 
the fear that we should have to wade through the 
waters of misfortune of some new Jena before we 
could reach ultimate victory. We must have 
done with this weary self -distrust, which has eaten 
into the simple greatness of our national character. 
But so long as that wound still gapes on the Upper 
Rhine, the German will never cease the sorrowful 
lamentation which Schlegel uttered in the days of 
our shame : 

Upon the Rhine, my own countrie, 
Ah, well-a-day, what woe is me! 
For that so much is lost to us ! 

The masses of South Germany know little of 
those splendid successes which the sword of Prussia 
long since obtained for us. The liberation of 
Pomerania, Silesia, Old Prussia, and Schleswig- 
Holstein, lay far outside of the circle of their 
vision. Yet the old song. 



O Strassburg, O Strassburg, 
Thou city wondrous fair ! 



no What We Demand from France 

is sung by every peasant of the South ; and from the 
day when the German flag waves from the Minster 
— and a splendid and enduring reward of victory 
crowns the deeds of the German army^ — ^in the 
distant huts of the Black Forest, and the Suabian 
Jura, there will be a joyful confidence that the old 
German splendours have risen from the dead, and 
that a new augmenter has been given to the Empire. 
When our imited strength has won that outwork 
of the German State, which is now in such mortal 
peril, the nation will have pledged its soul to the 
idea of imity. The resistance of the new province 
will strengthen the impulse of our policy towards 
unity, and constrain all sensible men to range 
themselves in disciplined loyalty behind the 
Prussian throne. The advantage is all the 
greater, as it is still possible that some new Re- 
publican attempt in Paris might tempt the moon- 
struck glance of the German Radicals once more 
to turn gradually towards the west. But the 
circle of vision of German politics becomes yearly 
wider and freer. When the nation feels that the 
vital interests of the German States are involved 
in the Slavic, the Scandinavian, and the Latin 
world, and that we are standing in the midst of 
the greatest and most complex revolution of the 
century, our parties will learn to rise out of the 
dogmatism of party life, and above the poverty of 
doctrinaire programmes, to the earnest and lofty 
treatment of the great questions which concern the 
State. 



What We Demand from France iii 

The German Confederation which has crossed 
the line of the Main will best fulfil its national 
mission when the clear activity of the North, and 
the more delicate and contemplative nature of the 
South, stand side by side in beautiful rivalry. 
We cannot spare one of all the powerful races 
which make up the complete German nation. 
But the narrow footstool of the Confederation in 
the south-east reaches no farther than the Bohe- 
mian forest. The manifold wealth of our German 
civilization will be vastly augmented when the 
South German nation is more fully represented in 
our new State, and the powerful nationality of the 
Germans of the Upper Rhine will certainly show 
its genuine German colour very soon after the 
foreign whitewash has been washed away. 

A politico-economical consideration may be 
added. Inspiring descriptions of the rich and 
happy plains of Germany make a necessary chapter 
of our patriotic catechism, and are never omitted 
in our German school books. They affect us as a 
sign of true love to the land of our forefathers ; but 
they are anything but true in themselves. Our 
sober judgment cannot refuse to admit that nature 
has dealt with our country much more like a step- 
mother than a mother. The singularly barren 
outline of our shore coast-hne on the North Sea, 
and the course of most of our German rivers and 
hill-chains, are just as unfavourable to political 
unity as they are to commerce. Only a few 
strips of our German soil can compare in natural 



112 What We Demand from France 

fertility with wealthy Normandy, the luxurious 
plains of England, and the teeming corn-fields of 
the interior of Russia. But here, in Alsace, there 
is a real German district, the soil of which, under 
favouring skies, is rich with blessings such as only 
a very few spots in the Upper Rhenish Palatinate 
and the mountain country of Baden enjoy. The 
unusual configuration of the country has made it 
possible to pierce canals through gaps in the 
mountains — magnificent waterways, from the 
Rhine to the basin of the Rhone and of the Seine — 
such as German ground scarcely ever admits. 
We are by no means rich enough to be able to re- 
nounce so precious a possession. 

Everything, in fact, is as clear as day. None of 
the foreign statesmen who interfered with our 
plans at the time of the Second Peace of Paris 
ever attempted to meet the arguments of Hum- 
boldt. Jealousy of the growing greatness of 
Germany, and the opposition which dominated all 
that period between the policies of England and 
of Russia — which vied with each other in showing 
favour to France — were decisive. England had 
already secured her war prizes in her colonies, and 
Russia hers in her Polish territories ; Germany was 
left alone to make her further demands. 

The full cynicism of this jealous statesmanship 
is revealed in the words which the Czar Alexander 
permitted himself in a thoughtless moment, 
"Either I must have a hand in this pie, or the pie 
shall not be baked at all." Freiherr von Stein 



What We Demand from France 113 

said, sorrowfully, "Russia decides that we are to 
remain vulnerable!" What a difference there is 
between then and now! We are not now so 
exhausted in money and in men as not to be able 
to defy the opposition of the whole of Europe. 
The neutral Powers might have stopped this 
French attempt at robbery by one strong and 
timely word. They failed to utter it, and they 
cannot complain to-day because we alone decide 
what we shall take as the prize of the victory 
which we alone have won. We owe it to the clear- 
sighted audacity of Count Bismarck that this war 
was begun at the right time — that the Court of 
the Tuileries was not allowed the welcome respite 
which would have permitted it to complete the 
web of its treacherous devices. And as the war 
began as a work of clear and statesmanlike calcu- 
lation, so it will end. If, during its prosecution, 
we have been magnanimous, almost to a fault — if 
we turned aside from the revolting ill-usage of 
our countrymen in France, and disdained to re- 
quite with a like brutality the loathsome threats 
directed against the women of Baden, we are all 
the more bound, at all hazards, to be firm about 
the terms of peace, and to complete the work of 
1 8 13 and of 1815. What lay in all our hearts as a 
far-off vision of longing desire has suddenly sprung 
up a practical fact, to be dealt with by a nation un- 
prepared for it. Occasion urges us ; the wonderful 
favour of Destiny bends down to offer us, in 
the grey dawn of German unity, the wreath 



114 What We Demand from France 

which we hardly hoped to have won in the mid-day 
splendour of the German Empire. Let us grasp 
it with courageous hands, that the blood of the 
dear ones who have died for us may not again cry 
out against our faint-heartedness. 

II 

ALSACE AND LORRAINE PAST AND PRESENT 

Where lies the frontier which we are justified in 
demanding? The answer is simple; for since the 
French nation made itself prominent in the Celto- 
Romance world, its national life and ours have at 
all times stood toughly and sharply opposed to one 
another. The two peoples dwelt side by side, not 
cast together like the nations which a geographical 
necessity forces to mingle at various points in 
Eastern Europe. Our West and South have, 
for a long period, received more culture than they 
gave, and yet the French boundary of language has 
been able, in the course of centuries, to advance 
no farther than a few hours' march. It became a 
source of trouble to both peoples when an arbitrary 
system of creating new states wedged the Lor- 
raine-Burgundian Empire in between their natural 
frontiers, to become an apple of unceasing contests ; 
while both made a termination of the struggle 
difficult to themselves by an aberration of the 
national imagination. To this day the French- 
man continues to glance across the Rhine with 



What We Demand from France 115 

feelings like those of the ancient Romans under 
C^sar. He has never forgotten the days when 
gorgeous Treves was the capital of Gaul; his 
school-books describe those first centuries of the 
Middle Ages, in which no French nation yet ex- 
isted, as a period of French dominion. The German 
Karl is the Frenchman's Charlemagne; in numer- 
ous inscriptions in Alsatian towns the memory of 
the Merovingian Dagoberts is purposely freshened 
up in order to recall the ancient power of France. 
Already in the fifteenth century, when the Armag- 
nacs were bringing fire and sword into Upper 
Germany, the longing for the Rhine frontier 
found expression in France. Above all, since the 
days of Louis XIV and Napoleon I, State and 
Society, Press and School, have run a race of 
rivalry in perverting history; and the whole of 
France laments the enormous breach between 
Lauterburg and Dunkirk, which the grasping greed 
of Germany is declared to have made in the natural 
boundaries of France. We Germans, on the other 
hand, are unwilling to forget the supreme rights 
which the Holy Roman Empire once possessed 
over the Burgundian kingdom of the Arelat. 

We must hasten to relinquish cheerfully this 
dreaming of antiquated dreams. As it is our 
intention to force the French to renounce their 
vision of the Rhine frontier, to give up to us 
what is ours, to recognize the European necessity 
of the two intermediate States on the Lower 
Rhine and on the Scheldt, we must concede to 



ii6 What We Demand from France 

them what is their due, and frankly confess that 
the conquering poHcy of France, directed against 
the Burgundian territories, obeyed, in its begin- 
nings, a well-justified national instinct. After- 
wards, indeed, deluded by easy successes, it passed 
all bounds. More than 50,000 square miles of 
the Holy Empire belong at this day to the French 
State, and by far the greater part of them most 
justly. The Southern Provinces of the Burgund- 
ian kingdom were French, beyond a doubt. When 
Charles V endeavoured at the Peace of Madrid 
to sever them from France, the Estates of Bur- 
gundy unanimously vowed that they were French- 
men, and Frenchmen they would remain; and the 
history of three centuries has justified their de- 
claration. The fact that the ancient one-headed 
eagle of our Empire once stood gorgeous on the 
town-hall of Lyons, over the same gate where we 
see the equestrian statue of Henry IV to-day; the 
fact that the same eagle once gazed down upon 
the glorious amphitheatre of Aries; and all similar 
facts, are but historical reminiscences which 
concern us little, and which are of no more value 
for the present policy of Germany than the ancient 
feudal rights of our Emperors in Italy. 

We desire to renew the power and glory of the 
Hohenstaufens and the Ottos, but not their World- 
Empire. Our new State owes its strength to the 
national idea. Its intention is to be an honest 
neighbour to every foreign nationality, a grasping 
adversary to none ; and for this reason it finds its 



What We Demand from France 117 

western frontier indicated to it by the language 
and manners and life of the rural population. 
Every State is kept fresh and young from below. 
New forces never cease to arise out of the healthy 
depths of the peasant class, while the population 
of the towns swiftly changes, and the families of 
the upper classes either fall away or are carried off 
into other habitations. We Germans still con- 
tinue to make this experience in the colonies of our 
eastern frontier. Wherever we have succeeded in 
Germanizing the peasant, our national life stands 
erect; wherever he has remained non-German, 
German ways of life wage to this day a struggle for 
their existence. Applying this standard, we shall 
find German and French nationality separated by 
a line which may be roughly described as leading 
along the ridge of the Vosges to the sources of 
the Saar, and thence to the north-west towards 
Diedenhofen and Longwy. What lies beyond is 
Gaulish. This boundary-line, hard to be per- 
ceived in the hilly districts of Lorraine, is drawn 
with mathematical precision at several points of 
the Wasgau hills. Wandering westward from the 
busy little town of Wesserling in Upper Alsace, one 
first ascends through leafy woods, enjoying the 
view into the smiling valley of the Thur, and 
reaching at Urbes the river boundary, the frontier 
of the departement of the Upper Rhine. There the 
road leads through a long tunnel, and the moment 
the traveller passes out of the dark into the 
departement of the Vosges, he sees that the country 



ii8 What We Demand from France 

and its inhabitants have undergone a complete 
change. The woods of Germany have vanished, 
and naked hills surround the valley of the infant 
Moselle. True, it is possible to guess, from the 
aspect of the tall peasants, from whom the French 
army draws so many fine-looking Cuirassiers, 
that many a drop of Germanic blood may flow 
in the veins of the population ; but down at Bous- 
sang no word of German is spoken. The poorer 
fashion in which the houses are built, the wooden 
shoes, and the cotton night-cap, at once betray 
French civilization. It is nothing short of German 
Chauvinism which makes a few newspapers already 
gratify themselves by restoring to Remiremont, 
which is entirely French, the name of Reimers- 
berg. What is it to us that the geographers 
of the sixteenth century called Plombieres the 
Plumbersbad? that lovely Pont-a-Mousson once 
formed an imperial county named Muselbruck? 
that no further back than eighty years ago the 
Duchy of Lorraine was mentioned under the name 
of Nomeny in the Diet at Ratisbon ? 

So, too, it is possible, even in Nanzig (Nancy) 
to discover faint traces of German reminiscences. 
At the railway-station the German traveller is 
cheered to observe the comfortable inscription 
*'Trinkstube" by the side of the inevitable "Bu- 
vette.*' But the capital of Lorraine is French in 
manners and in language. This second and more 
charming Versailles received its architectural 
character from the French regime of its Stanislas le 



What We Demand from France 119 

Bienfaisant, and four years ago it was both sincere 
and justified in celebrating the centenary jubilee 
of its incorporation in France. 

Hardly the tithe of those French provinces 
which once upon a time belonged to the Ger- 
manic Empire — a territory comprising about 5000 
square miles, with rather less than a million and a 
half of inhabitants — can at this day be reckoned 
as German land. It is not the business of a wise 
national policy to go very far beyond this extent 
of territory; but, at the same time, such a policy 
ought not to cling with doctrinaire obstinacy to the 
boundary of language as a limit which must in no 
case be crossed. There is no perfect identity 
between the political and the national frontier in 
any European country. Not one of the great 
Powers, and Germany no more than the rest 
of them, can ever subscribe to the principle that 
"language alone decides the formation of States.'* 
It would be impossible to carry that principle into 
effect. From a military point of view, the German 
territory in France is secured by two strongholds, 
which lie a few miles beyond the line of language. 
The fortress of Belfort commands the gap in the 
mountains between the Jura and the Vosges, which 
has so often been the gateway through which 
invading hosts have passed into or out of France. 
The upper part of the course of the Moselle, again, 
is covered by Metz, which is at this day, like 
Belfort, almost entirely French, in spite of its 
ancient traditions as an Imperial city {Reichstadt) , 



I20 What We Demand from France 

in spite of the German inscriptions which still 
appear here and there, on a wagoner's hostelry in 
the high-roofed '' German street" {Deutsche Gasse), 
in spite of the bad French dialect spoken by its 
citizens, in spite of the two thousand German 
inhabitants, to whom sermons used to be preached 
in German only a few years ago. Are we to 
renounce these two strongholds for the sake of an 
untenable dogma? Renounce the strong walls of 
Metz, which are trebly necessary to us since, in our 
good-natured desire for peace, we relinquished the 
rock nest of Luxemburg? No! right and prudence 
support our moderate claims when we simply de- 
mand the German territory in the possession of 
France, and so much Gaulish territory as is neces- 
sary for securing its possession; in other words, 
something like the Departements Haut-Rhin and 
Bas-Rhin in their entirety, the greater part of Mo- 
selle, and the lesser part of Meurthe. The Virgin im- 
age, which so long stood boastfully over the arms of 
Metz, and which defied even the hosts of Charles V, 
shall be struck to the ground by our good sword 
to-day. The brave Saxon troops were permitted 
to aid in reconquering the fortress with the sacri- 
fice of which the Saxon Maurice commenced the 
long period of German humiliation. It ill befits a 
people rising to new greatness to abandon the 
spot where the justice of its destiny has so visibly 
prevailed. The comfort of the French at Metz is 
of little importance compared with the necessity 
of securing its natural capital, and a strong bul- 



What We Demand from France 121 

wark, for the province of Lorraine. In the pro- 
gress of time, German ways of Hfe will find a home 
once more in the ancient episcopal city. As for 
measures of force against their nationality: they 
need no more be feared by the Gauls of Lorraine 
and the inhabitants of the few Gallic-speaking 
villages of the Vosges, than they have had to be 
feared by the brave Walloons in Malmedy and 
Montjoie, who at this day rival their German 
fellow-citizens in faithful self-devotion. 

If a livelier sense of their common duties and 
interests prevailed in the family of European 
States, the arrogant disturber of their peace would 
have to be humbled far more deeply. He would 
be forced to give up Savoy and Nice to Italy, and 
West Flanders, famous from of old, with Dun- 
kirk, with Lille — the ancient Ryssel — with Douai, 
on whose town-hall the Flemish lion still brand- 
ishes the weather-flag, to Belgium. But the vis 
inerticE, the fear which fills Europe at the thought 
of any violent change, and the secret mistrust with 
which all the States regard the new Germany, will 
hardly permit so thorough a reconstruction of 
the political system of Europe. 

The German territory which we demand is ours 
by nature and by history. It is true that here, 
where the Rhine still rushes along as an untamed 
stream from the glaciers, changing its bed accord- 
ing to its will, the people on its opposite banks 
maintain no such lively intercourse as below 
Mainz. The traveller who passes from an Alsatian 



122 What We Demand from France 

village towards the Rhine has often to make long 
detours through bushes and rolHng stones, past 
morasses in which the Rhine formerly had its bed, 
and he is not unf requently detained for an hour by 
the riverside, until a wretched boat ferries him 
across to one of the castles of the KaiserstuhL 
But, after all, no greater difficulties beset the in- 
tercourse between the high-lying lands of Baden 
and the Uberrhein than that between the Baden 
and the Bavarian Palatinate, or between Starken- 
burg and Rhenish Hesse. Nature herself meant 
that the plain of the Upper Rhine should have a 
common destiny, and has environed it with mount- 
ain walls of the same formation. On either bank 
the moimtain range reaches its greatest height to 
the south; for the peasant of the Breisgau, the 
Ballon d'Alsace serves as a weather-glass, just as 
the Sundgau man on the other side gazes upon the 
Schwarzwald Belchen and the Blue Mountain 
(dem Blauen). On either bank the lovely scenery 
displays its full beauty where a cross valley comes 
forth out of the mountain-chain, where the 
Engelsburg commands the entrance to the valley 
of the Thur, where the three castles of Rappolt- 
stein look down into the narrow gorge, where the 
ancient fastness, Hoh-Barr, rises from the red 
rock of the valley of the Zom — just as on the 
opposite side at Freiburg, Offenburg, and Baden. 
A trade-road of hoar antiquity crosses the middle 
of the plain, passing through the Wasgau at the 
Zabem Stair, through the Schwarzwald at Pforz- 



What We Demand from France 123 

heim gate, connecting the Westerreich, to use the 
expression of our fathers, with the interior of Ger- 
many. Where it crosses the river Hes Strassburg, 
the Cologne of the Upper Rhine, with her Minster 
visible as a landmark in a wide circuit of Upper 
Germany, as the Cathedral of Cologne stands in the 
districts of Berg. A glorious panorama of German 
scenery! This thought has most assuredly sug- 
gested itself to everyone who has stood, in the 
freshness of morning, when the shreds of the mists 
still cling to the rocky summits upon the walls of 
Schlettstadt. High up on the mountains tower 
the dark pine-forests, which are hardly known 
in the woodless Gaulish country ; lower down those 
bright chestnut-woods, which no man who has 
once made the Rhine his home can bear to miss; 
on the slopes, the gardens of the vines; and down 
below, that undulating, odorous plain, the mere 
recollection of which charmed from Goethe in his 
old age glowing words of praise for his ''glorious 
Alsace." Even we of the younger generation, 
who are more familiar with the beauty of the 
mountains, and have a duller sense for the charms 
of the plain than the people of the eighteenth 
century, cannot help joining in the enthusiasm of 
the old Master-poet, as he describes the broad 
fruit-trees in the midst of the corn-field, the ancient 
limes of the Wanzenau, and the play of the sunlight, 
caught and broken at numberless openings of the 
wide waving plain. 

German story winds its wondrous network 



124 What We Demand from France 

round the hundred castles of the Sundgau as 
closely as the ivy twining round their walls. Here 
by the rushing waterfall the giant's daughter 
ascended to the castle of Nideck, carrying the 
peasant wight in her apron, plough and horses and 
all. There on Tronja dwelt the dread Hagen of 
the Nibelungs; high up on the Wasgenstein raged 
the wild conflicts of our Song of Waltharius. Here, 
in the valley of the Zom, Fridolin went his way to 
the forge. There, by the Bergkirche, flows a 
fountain of the tears of Ottilia, saint of sorrow and 
suffering, like unto that which flows on the other 
bank in the quiet recess of the valley near Freiburg. 
Everywhere in the merry little land, German 
humour and German merriment and enjoyment of 
life held their jousts. The Count of Rappoltstein 
was the king of all singers and errants of the Holy 
Empire, and every year he summoned the master- 
less Guild of Jesters to a joyous Diet of Pipers. In 
the town-hall of Miilhausen is preserved to this day 
the chattering-stone {Klapper stein), which used 
to be hung round the necks of quarrelsome women. 
Without the golden wine of Rangen the delicate 
spire of the Church of St. Theobald at Thann could 
never have risen so boldly into the air; for it was a 
prosperous vintage, and the grape-gatherers came 
to the rescue of the despairing architect and mixed 
fiery must with his mortar, lest the joists of the 
airy edifice should fall asunder. 

Alsace has always maintained an honourable 
place in the earlier history of German Art. A 



What We Demand from France 125 

thousand years ago the famous Ottfried, in his 
monk's cell at Weissenburg, wrote his Krist, the 
most ancient great monument of old German 
poetry which has come down to our time. Gott- 
fried of Strassburg sang the passionate lay of 
Tristan and Isolda, and Master Walther von der 
Vogelweide proclaimed the poetic glories of Rein- 
mar of Hagenau. Those marvels of Gothic archi- 
tecture arose in Thann and Strassburg, and Martin 
Schongauer painted his simple-minded pictures for 
the good town of Colmar. Above all the jest and 
the mocking play of wit have remained ever dear 
to the joyous sons of our frontier-land. Nearly 
all the noteworthy humorists of our earlier litera- 
ture were natives of Alsace, or, at all events, soci- 
ally connected with the district. In Strassburg 
the liberal-minded and lovable wag, Sebastian 
Brandt, wrote his Ship of Fools, and Thomas 
Mumer his malicious satires against the Luther- 
ans. George Wickram, who, in his Rollwagen 
(country wagon) , collected the merriest conceits of 
our ancestors, was a Colmar boy; and in Forbach 
dwelt Fischart, the mightiest among the few 
Germans who have manifested power amounting 
to genius in comic poetry. 

And what a busy mixture of political forces, 
what power and boldness of German civic life, 
there gathered in the little land in the days when 
the lions of the Hohenstaufen still gazed down as 
lords and masters from the royal citadel above. 
Eleven free cities of the Empire, among them 



126 What We Demand from France 

Hagenau, the favourite city of Barbarossa, which 
he entrusted with the imperial jewels, and, out- 
shining all the rest, Strassburg. What has the 
capital of the Departement Bas-Rhin done, or seen 
done, that might be even compared to the ancient 
history — great in its smallness, proud in its mod- 
esty — of the German Imperial city? Its episcopal 
see was called the noblest of the nine great founda- 
tions which came one after another along the 
''priestly lane" (Pfaffengasse) of the Rhine; and 
at all times loud praises were heard in the Empire 
of the ancient German honesty and bravery of its 
citizens. Thus Strassburg faithfully shared all the 
fortunes of the Rhenish cities — among them the 
diseases which assailed the very heart and soul of 
our civic life: the Black Death, and its fellow, the 
Jews' gangrene (Judenbrand) . She firmly adhered 
to the Rhenish Hansa; like Cologne, she strove 
with her bishop in bitter feuds ; she saw the great 
families of the Zoms and Mullnheims contending 
for the upper hand, as Cologne did those of her 
Weisen and Overstolzen; she witnessed the men of 
the Guilds rise in insurrection against the great 
families, until at last after their victory there 
was inscribed in the Common Book of the city 
that excellent constitution, which Erasmus com- 
pared, as a living ensample of well-ordered govern- 
ment, to the polity of Massilia. The frontier-city 
loved to hear itself called the strong outwork 
of the Empire ; its citizens looked down with deep 
hatred upon their Gaulish neighbours; and they 



What We Demand from France 127 

marched into the field, with the Swiss, against 
Burgundians, and beheaded the baiHff of Charles 
the Bold at Colmar. Happy days, when the 
strong PJenfiigthiirm could hardly contain the 
treasure of its wealth, when Gutenberg was 
venturing upon his first essays, when the fame 
of the Strassburg mastersingers {Meister Sanger) 
flew far and wide through the Empire, and the 
architectural lodge of the Minster sat in judgment 
over the fellows of its craft as far as Thuringia 
and Saxony, when the friendly Zurichers, in 
their fortunate vessel, bore the hot Porridge-Pot 
(Breitopf) down the stream, and Bishop William, 
of Hohenstein, held the pompous entry of which 
the keen pen of Sebastian Brandt has left us so 
charming a description. 

The age of the Reformation supervened. Ger- 
many reached, for the second time, as she is now 
reaching for the third time, one of the crowning 
summits of her national life ; and the population of 
Alsace, too, with lofty consciousness, took part 
in the great struggles of the German mind. In 
Strassburg, in Schlettstadt and Hagenau, Dringen- 
berg and Wimpfelingen conducted the learned la- 
bours of the schools of the Humanists ; Gailer von 
Kaiserberg preached in German in the Strassburg 
Minster against the abuses of the Church. There 
was a wealth of intellectual forces, of which the 
Alsace of to-day has not the faintest conception. 
The maltreated peasantry laid passionate hold of 
the world-liberating teachings of Wittenberg. The 



128 What We Demand from France 

peasants in Alsace affixed the Bundschuh (shoe- 
symbol of union) to the pole, like the peasants hard 
by in the district of Spires and the Schwarzwald. 
Like the latter, they fought and suffered. At 
Zabem the Bishop of Strassburg passed his cruel 
judgment on the rebels, as the hard prelate of 
Spires did at Grombach and on the Kastemburg. 
In the towns, however, the evangelical doctrine 
maintained its footing. Fourteen cities of the 
Empire, with Strassburg at their head, subscribed, 
at the Diet of Spires, the famous Protest of the 
Seven Princes, which was to give its name to the 
new faith. Hereupon Martin Bucer began his 
productive work at Strassburg. The city stood in 
a meditating position between the Lutheranism of 
the North and the doctrine of Zwingli. She liber- 
ally bestowed upon Protestantism those weapons 
which have never failed it. She founded her li- 
brary, her gymnasium, and, at a later date, her fa- 
mous University, where Hedio and Capito taught. 
When the Protestants professed their creed at 
Augsburg, Strassburg, together with three other 
cities of Upper Germany, handed in her freer con- 
fession, the " Tetrapolitana. " After this the city, 
like the other chief towns of Upper Germany, — • 
like Augsburg, Ulm, and Nuremberg, — was involved 
in the evil fortunes of the Schmalkaldic League. 
There remained yet one hope — the aid of France. 
But the German city disdained an alHance with the 
arch-foe of the Empire. With death in his heart, 
her burgomaster, Jacob Sturm, bent his knee be- 



What We Demand from France 129 

fore Charles V, for the Spaniard was the Emperor 
after all. And when, six years later, the criminally 
reckless among the German Protestants actually 
concluded their offensive and defensive league with 
France, and when King Henry II, as the Protector 
of ''Germanic liberty," advanced his armies 
towards the Rhine, Strassburg once more proved 
true to Emperor and Empire, and shut her gates 
against the French. 

Are we to believe that that rich millennium of 
German history has been utterly destroyed by two 
centuries of French dominion? Only we Germans 
who dwell in the upper country, which our ances- 
tors were so fond of calling "the Empire" {das 
Reich) , can thoroughly realize the terrible extent of 
the criminal excesses of the Hunlike fury which was 
directed against us by the French. How different 
would be the aspect of our native land did we 
possess, besides the glorious city types of ancient 
Danzig, Liibeck, and Nuremberg, our ancient 
Spires also, and our ancient Worms and Freiburg, 
and Heidelberg — those cities with proud towers 
and lofty roofs, with which Merian was still 
acquainted. In the Church of Landau the sepul- 
chre still stands which Louis XIV caused to be 
erected to his lieutenant-governor in Alsace, the 
wild Catalan Montclar, the destroyer of the magni- 
ficent Madenburg. The Christian virtue of the 
ruthless brigand is lauded in grandiloquent Latin, 
and the inscription thus unctuously concludes: 
**Pass on thy way, O wanderer, and learn that it 



130 What We Demand from France 

is only virtue which ennobles military glory." 
Was not such a blasphemous offence even more 
shameful for us than for the wrongdoers them- 
selves? But the law of nations knows of no 
prescription. 

The land of the Vistula in the possession of the 
German order and the castle of its Grand Master, 
the Marienburg, were once upon a time delivered, 
by the treason of German Estates, into the hands 
of the stranger. Three centuries passed away 
before Germany felt herself to be strong enough to 
demand back from the Poles that of which they 
had despoiled her. With the same right we seek 
justice to-day for the wrong committed by France 
against our West two centuries ago. 

As soon as the three Lorraine Sees had been 
made over, by the treason of Maurice of Saxony, 
to France, the Paris politicians, with cunning 
calculation, directed their first efforts to obtain 
Alsace; because the remnant of Lorraine, sur- 
rounded on all sides by French domains, must 
follow, after that, of itself. The unspeakable 
meanness of the numberless petty sovereign lords, 
among whom Alsace was parcelled out, offered the 
most satisfactory basis of operations to the devices 
of French intrigue during the rotten years of peace 
which followed the religious pacification of Augs- 
burg. On the ruins of Hoh-Barr may yet be 
read how, in the year 1584, Johann von Mander- 
scheidt. Bishop of Strassburg, erected hanc arcem 
nulli inimicam — the frontier - fortress against 



What We Demand from France 131 

France, hostile to no one ! Do not these two words 
imply the bitterest of satires against the shameful 
impotence of the sinking Germanic Empire? Do 
they not recall the delightful inscription, "Grant 
peace, Lord, in this our day, " which the valiant 
army of the Prince-Bishop of Hildesheim wore on 
their hats? Thus had the higher nobiHty of the 
once great German nation been already shaken in 
its moral forces, when the Elector of Bavaria, in 
the Thirty Years' War, abandoned Alsace to the 
French, upon which the instrument of the Peace 
of Westphalia, in terms capable of divers inter- 
pretations, transferred the rights which had pre- 
viously belonged to the House of Austria to the 
French Crown. 

It was inevitable that the rigid unity of the 
French State should next direct its activity towards 
the final annihilation of those relics of German 
petty- State life which still survived in its new 
domain. French residents were fixed at Strass- 
burg, and French pay was drawn by the three 
notorious brothers Fiirstenberg, who governed 
in Munich, in Cologne, and in Strassburg, and 
whom their indignant contemporaries called the 
Egonists. Yet while the nobility was thus weav- 
ing the nets of France, German intellectual force 
and German fidehty were long preserved to the 
people in Alsace. It was at this very period that 
the famous Philip Jacob Spener, who awakened 
to a new life the moral force of Lutheranism, which 
had waxed cold and dull, was growing up in 



132 What We Demand from France 

Rappoltsweiler; and the people joyously hailed 
the Brandenburger as he struggled with the French 
on the Upper Rhine, and then routed the Swedes 
at Fehrbellin on his own Marches. A popular 
song, printed at Strassburg in 1675, ^o be sung to 
the old Protestant tune of ''Gustav Adolf, high- 
bom leader," commences thus: 

With might the great Elector came, 

Peace to secure right truly; 
He seeks to break the Frenchman's pride, 

So boastful and unruly, 
All by his skill and art in war. 

It was thus that the distant Western Marches 
were the first to salute the first hero of the new 
Northern Power by the title of the Great. 

Meanwhile French statecraft bored more and 
more deeply down into the rotten Empire. The 
ten small imperial cities in Alsace were subjected 
to the sovereignty of the King, when an act of 
treason, the foul threads of which are to this day 
hidden in obscurity, delivered Strassburg also into 
the hands of Louis. What a day, that fatal 24th 
of October, 1681, when the new master held his 
entry! with the citizens of the free imperial city 
swearing fidelity on their knees, while German 
peasants were doing serf's labour outside in the 
trenches of the citadel! At the porch of the 
Minster, Bishop Francis Egon von Furstenberg 
received the King, thanked him for having again 
recovered the cathedral out of the hands of the 



What We Demand from France 133 

heretics, and exclaimed, ''Lord, now lettest Thou 
Thy servant depart in peace, since he has seen his 
Saviour ! " Meanwhile Rebenac, the King's envoy, 
declared at Berlin that the King had not had the 
least intention of breaking the peace of the Empire. 
Cruel acts of maltreatment directed against the 
Strassburg Protestants formed the worthy close 
of this for ever shameful episode. Three times 
over the dynastic policy of the Hapsburgs neglected 
the fairest opportunities of recovering what had 
been lost, and at last it sacrificed Lorraine also. 
Slowly and cautiously the French began to 
GalHcize their new territories. Years passed 
before the independent administration of the 
German Lorraine was done away with, and 
more years before the German chancery at the 
Court of Versailles was abolished. Yet it was 
precisely in this period of foreign dominion that 
Alsace sank deep into the heart of the German 
nation. For there is no book more German than 
that incomparable one which tells of the most 
beautiful of all the mysteries of human existence, 
of the growth of genius ; and there is no picture in 
Goethe's life of greater warmth and depth than 
the story of the bHssful days of love in Alsace. A 
ray of love from the Sesenheim parsonage has 
penetrated into the youthful dreams of every 
German heart. That German home, threatened 
with inundation by Gaulish manners and customs 
seems to us all like a sanctuary desecrated. But 
the merry folk of Alsace whom Goethe knew, fond 



134 What We Demand from France 

of the song and the dance, lived carelessly on, 
troubling themselves but little about their am- 
biguous political existence, and coming rarely into 
contact with foreign language and ways of life. 
The Strassburg University, indeed, already began, 
in French fashion, to insist more upon practical 
usefulness than upon depth of knowledge, but it 
still taught in the German tongue. Through its 
ornaments, Schopflin and Koch, it maintained a 
constant intercourse with German science, and it 
was frequented by many young men from the 
neighbouring parts of the Empire, by Goethe, 
Herder, Lenz, Stilling, Mettemich. Even under 
the oppressive superintendence of royal praetors, 
the city adhered to its ancient constitution; and a 
hundred years after its incorporation it remained 
as little French, as Danzig was Polish tmder the 
protection of the Crown of Poland. 

It was the Revolution which first made the 
Strassburgers part of the State, and caused them 
to share the national feeling of the French. The 
Revolution united to the French territory the 
petty German sovereignties of Alsace which still re- 
mained, and here, as everywhere else, it destroyed 
the separate rights of the province. Even the 
ancient glorious name of the country had to give 
way before names characteristic of French vanity, 
Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin — the Lower Rhine where 
the stream is not yet capable of bearing large 
vessels! In the tempests of the great Revolution 
the people of Alsace, like all the citizens of France, 



What We Demand from France 135 

learned to forget their past. And it is here that 
the essential and fundamental feature of modern 
French political sentiment, and the ultimate 
source of the disease pervading the French State, 
is to be sought. The nation has broken with its 
history; it accounts what lies behind the Revolu- 
tion as dead and done. Thirty years ago the city 
of Strassburg began the publication of its straight- 
forward old chronicles — doubtless a work due to 
the genuine love of home — but the German, whose 
past ages are still a living truth to him, reads with 
an uncomfortable shudder the unsympathetic pre- 
face composed by the maire Schutzenberger. The 
glorious days of the imperial city are treated of 
in precisely the same tone as the fact that the 
Eighth Legion, once upon a time, was stationed at 
Argentoratum. All that happened before the 
sacred date of '89 belongs to archaeological research, 
and no bridge remains to connect to-day with 
yesterday. 

Awful and abnormal events were necessary if so 
radical a transmutation of political feeling was to 
be achieved, and hardly anywhere else did the 
Convention carry on its war of annihilation against 
the Provinces after so bloody and so merciless a 
fashion as at Strassburg. The loyal and ponderous 
German burghers were unable to follow with suffi- 
cient swiftness the whimsical spasms of the French 
mind. The city was enthusiastically in favour of 
the constitutional Monarchy; and it held fast to 
its faith long after the Parisians had broken the 



136 What We Demand from France 

Crown in pieces. Then it applauded with its 
whole heart the rhetorical pathos of the Gironde, 
after the Parisians had already donned the Jacobin 
cap. When it fell at last into the power of the 
Jacobins, a trait of German idealism and of a Ger- 
man sense of equity survived after all in its native 
demagogues, in Eulogius Schneider and in the 
shoemaker Jung. Thus the Strassburgers were 
suspected as Moderates by the Terrorists; and in 
its rage for equality, and its mad passion for unity, 
the Convention cast itself with loathsome savage- 
ness upon the German city. St. Juste and Lebas 
declared the guillotine en permanence, in order to 
** nationalize" Alsace and to purify it from the 
German barbarians. The German dress was pro- 
hibited, the Minster was dedicated as a Temple of 
Reason, the red cap was planted on its spire, and 
the club of the Propaganda proposed in serious 
earnest the deportation of every citizen not 
speaking French. 

Thus, while the obstinate resistance of the Ger- 
man city passed away, amidst these sanguinary hor- 
rors, the peasant population was gained for France 
by the benefits of the Revolution. German "peas- 
ant right" still obtained in the country; the peas- 
ant still groaned under the harsh dues he owed to 
the lord of the soil; in some cases he was still in a 
condition of serfdom. The night of the 4th of 
August suddenly made him a free landed proprie- 
tor. In parts of the interior of France, on the other 
hand, the system of metayers, or some other similar 



What We Demand from France 137 

oppressive system of land tenure, still prevailed, 
and the new law made but little change in the 
condition of the rural population. To these things 
we owe it that the German peasants of France 
blessed the Revolution, while the French peasantry 
in the Vendee fought passionately against it. 
The old obstinate love of liberty of the Alemanni 
was reawakened; the peasants in Alsace hurried 
to the standards of the Republic; and during the 
struggles of those savage days they drank deep of 
the new French ideas, which are closely connected 
with that contempt for the past of which I have 
spoken. Henceforth there burnt in them a fanati- 
cal love of equality which loathes as feudalism any 
and every advantage of birth, however innocent, 
and the measureless self-consciousness of the 
Fourth Estate, which in France is unable to forget 
how the existence of the State once rested on the 
points of its pikes. On the other hand. Count 
Wurmser, who commanded the Austrian army 
before the lines of Weissenburg, was an Alsatian 
nobleman, deeply initiated into the secret intrigues 
of discontented members of his order. He made 
no secret of his intention that his good sword 
should restore the glories of the squirearchy 
{Junkerthum) . Thus the war against Germany 
appeared in the eyes of the Alsatian peasantry to 
be a war for the liberty of their persons and for 
their bit of soil. 

Finally the population gave itself up to the 
charm of the fame of the soldiers' Emperor, who 



138 What We Demand from France 

knew so thoroughly how to make use of the warlike 
vigour of these Germans. The Germanic Empire 
came to a miserable end. The Alsatians Pfeffel 
and Matthieu acted as middlemen in the dirty 
barter, when our princes shared the shreds of 
the Empire among themselves. The last feeling 
of respect for the German State was at an end. 
When Germany rose at last, and the allies invaded 
France, the people of Alsace once more deemed 
the blessings of the Revolution to be in danger. 
The fortified places, bravely defended by citizens 
and soldiers, held out for a long time. Armed 
bands of peasants carried on a guerilla warfare in 
the Vosges ; they crucified captive German soldiers, 
and perpetrated such inhuman abominations as 
to make Riickert lament the ungermanized man- 
ners and morals of the land. Numerous pictures 
in the churches and old-fashioned burghers' houses 
remain to recall this war of the people against the 
Strangers. The wretched period of the raid upon 
the demagogues in Germany followed. German 
fugitives found protection and refuge in the land 
across the Rhine, Strassburg presses printed what 
the German censorship prohibited, and the man of 
Alsace looked with contempt upon his ancient home 
as upon a land of impotence and slavery. And 
according to the constant law that an unnatural 
condition of the people begets strange popular 
diseases, it was precisely this conquered German 
land which became the nursery of Chauvinism. 
The course of the Rhine, the Saar, and the Moselle, 



What We Demand from France 139 

indicated intercourse with Germany as necessary 
to these districts. They hungered after new con- 
quests ; boasted of surpassing all other provinces of 
France in "patriotism"; were specially fond of 
sending their sons into the army ; and two years ago 
the war-loving natives of Lorraine were alone ready 
to accept the proposal of universal military service 
which the self-love of the French rejected. A 
clear picture, and one simply unintelligible to a 
German, is presented of this French feeling in the 
frontier-lands in the much-read "national novels'* 
of the two natives of Alsace-Lorraine, Erckmann 
and Chatrian, the apostles of peace among the 
poets of France. What genuinely German men and 
women are their Pf alzburgers ! In language and 
sentiment they are Germans, but they have lost the 
last trace of a remembrance of their ancient con- 
nection with the Empire. They are enthusiastic 
for the tricolore; they bitterly hate the Prussien; 
and the narrators themselves — write in French! 

Well may we Germans be seized with awe when 
we witness the reawakening of the blind fury of 
18 1 5 in Gunstett and Weissenburg; when we find 
these German men raving, in the German tongue, 
against the "German dogs," the "stinking Prus- 
sians," and raging like wild beasts against their 
flesh and blood. And yet we have no right to sit 
in judgment on this deluded population, wl ich, 
notwithstanding everything, is among the most 
vigorous of the German races. Amdt himself 
found good reason for defending the men of Alsace 



140 What We Demand from France 

against Rtickert's bitter complaints. What raises 
our indignation in these unhappy men after all is 
nothing else than the old German particularism, 
the fatal impulse of every German to be something 
else and something better than his German 
neighbour — to deem his own little country the 
sacred land of the Centre, and to stand fast, with 
blind fidelity, by standards which he has once 
taken up. It is true that, in this case, our old 
hereditary German disease appears in the most 
revolting form possible, under circumstances of 
the most unnatural character. Look at the 
unhappy, misused men who fell like assassins at 
Worth and Forbach, on the rear of the German 
warriors. They are the Germans who have had no 
share in the great resurrection of our nation during 
the last two centuries, and we should all of us 
be Hke them were there no Prussia in existence. 
The man of Alsace is not a mere Frenchman; he 
has no desire to be so; he views the Gaul with 
suspicion, often with hatred; he feels self-conscious 
as a member of the little chosen people, which sur- 
passes all Frenchmen in industry and warlike 
vigour, as it surpasses all Germans in the fact that 
it is French. Other Germans, too, have been 
known in other times to take pride in displaying 
their German fidelity to the Kings of Poland, 
Sweden, Denmark, or England; and the men of 
Stettin fought once for the Swedish Crown, 
against the great Elector, in even bitterer earnest 
than the men of Alsace of to-day. It is only from 



What We Demand from France 141 

the hands of the Prussian State, as it grew into 
its strength, that we have recovered the gift of a 
common country. 

And where were the people of Alsace to learn to 
esteem our German ways of life? What sights 
met them immediately outside their gates? The 
ridiculous comedy of the petty States, and the 
gambling- tables of Baden, at which German good- 
nature bowed humbly down before French immor- 
ality! The old Empire to which they had once 
loyally adhered had disappeared; of the young 
State which was arising in glory they knew nothing. 
How long ago is it since public opinion, among 
ourselves, deplored as the fall of Germany w^hat 
was really Germany's awakening? How long since 
there existed a French, and a Hapsburg, but not 
a German view of German history? As recently 
as the beginning of the century, the ordinary 
German patriot used to seek the final cause of 
German disunion in the genesis of the Prussian 
State. And pray what was the picture of Ger- 
many which our Radicals, following in the foot- 
steps of Heine, were in the habit of sketching only 
forty years ago? The German nation was sup- 
posed to be partial to talking philosophy and 
to drinking beer; but it was otherwise harmless, 
and it had the tendencies of a lackey. Its petty 
States were blessed with a few ideas of liberty 
which they had picked up from the great Revolu- 
tion and the great Napoleon, while in the north 
there was imfortunately the State of the drill- 



142 What We Demand from France 

sergeant and of feudalism — the robber- State of 
the Hoberaux. It is this caricature of Germany 
which circulates to this day in France. The 
Second Empire, which has performed so many 
involuntary services to Germany, has, indeed, to 
some extent shaken the self-consciousness of the 
men of Alsace themselves. A few thinking men 
have recognized the fact, which is clear as the light 
of day, that any and every German State is at 
present incomparably freer than Imperial France. 
But the mass of the people, misguided by an inde- 
scribably stupid provincial Press, was left without 
any tidings of the immense change which was being 
accompHshed in Germany, and lived on in its old 
dreams. 

Has a new and individual civiHzation come into 
life in this German race, saturated with French 
feelings and opinions? The people of Alsace, 
accustomed after the manner of Germans to make 
a virtue of necessity, often delight to declare that 
their country forms the connecting link between 
the Romance and the Germanic world, and that, 
for this reason, it is of greater importance at the 
present day to the progress of European culture 
than formerly when it was a territory of the Ger- 
manic Empire. No man has developed this idea 
more delicately and felicitously than the highly 
cultivated Miilhausener, Ch. Dollfus. About the 
year i860 it appeared as if the province were really 
about to fulfil this office of mediation. The 
Revue Germanique, written chiefly by men from 



What We Demand from France 143 

Alsace, endeavoured to offer the French a faithful 
picture of German science; the Temps also, con- 
ducted by them, laboured to arrive at a fair 
judgment of our political life. At that time even 
Frenchmen of old Celtic blood remarked that 
nothing but the imearthing of the Germanic forces 
which had been half buried could supply the 
French soil with new creative power; and we 
Germans used to watch these unusual efforts 
with honest delight. But all such attempts have 
been utterly wrecked. It could not well have 
been otherwise. The pleasure which the French 
took in the works of the German intellect always 
rested on the tacit assumption that we continued 
to resemble the old caricature, that we were still a 
people devoid of political organization, a people 
of poets and thinkers. No sooner had the Bohe- 
mian victories shown the power of the German 
State than a change ensued in French Hfe, to 
which we have failed to pay sufficient attention 
here. The influence of German ideas halted; 
the Revue Germanique died long ago; the Temps 
has displayed precisely the same captiousness and 
hostility against the new German Confederation 
as has been shown by the rest of the French 
papers; and after all the awful experiences of the 
last few weeks we can expect nothing but a still 
deeper estrangement for the immediate future. 
Was Alsace in truth a connecting link between 
Germany and France? A mutual giving and 
taking is surely an indispensable element of such 



144 What We Demand from France 

a connection. What have we received from the 
people of Alsace? What have they been to us? 
Their higher intellects were simply lost to German 
national life, they became Frenchmen with a slight 
colouring of German culture; like Dollfus himself, 
they served the foreigner, not us. The loss of 
the German provinces would be of infinitely more 
importance to France than is implied in the dimi- 
nution of the eighty-nine departements by three. 
It would not only be a terrible moral blow — for 
these territories are the pride of the nation, the 
oft-contested prize of ancient victories, the famed 
terre classique de la France — but a loss of intellect- 
ual forces which it would be utterly impossible to 
make good. It is astonishing to find in every 
large town in France, everywhere and in every 
station in life, the industrious, clever, and trust- 
worthy sons of Alsace. The population of the 
Departement Bas-Khin, although it is healthy and 
fertile in the German fashion, considerably dimin- 
ished during the decade from 1850 to i860, in 
consequence of the emigration en masse into the 
French cities. Are we to regard this regular 
absorption of German forces by the French people 
as a healthy action and reaction — now that we 
possess the power of putting an end to this morbid 
state of affairs? Switzerland is really a land of 
transition and of mediation. There, three nations, 
united by means of a free and flexible constitution, 
learn how to appreciate and deal considerately 
with one another. But the centralization and the 



What We Demand from France 145 

domineering national spirit of France cannot allow 
a province either an independent culture or a 
separate language. Official statistics in France, as 
their director, Legoyt, has often openly confessed, 
disdain on principle to enquire into the rela- 
tions between the different languages. The State 
assumes that every Frenchman understands 
French. The world is not permitted to learn 
how many millions of Basques, Bretons, Proven- 
gals, Flemings, and Germans have no acquaintance 
with the language of the State ; the popular tongue 
differing from it is to be degraded into a dialect, 
into the speech of the uncultivated. The French 
bureaucracy in Alsace has laboured in the direction 
of this goal with a ruthless zeal, and so fanatically, 
that Napoleon III was at times obliged to moder- 
ate the clumsiness of his too eager officials. Supe- 
rior education is entirely given in French. An 
attempt has even been made recently, by the 
introduction of French educational nurseries for 
the young {Kindergarten) , to estrange the children 
from their tenderest years from their mother- 
tongue. Those who speak pure high- German may 
sometimes find it easier to make themselves under- 
stood by half-educated men in Alsace if they help 
themselves out with French ; for people of this class 
have lost the free and facile use of any form of 
speech except the dialect of their native district. 
The attempt to degrade the language of a nation 
which is one of the standard-bearers of civilization, 
into the rudeness of the Celtic patois of the Bretons, 

10 



146 What We Demand from France 

is sheer insanity and a sin against nature. The 
proverb of our homely ancestors must remain 
eternally true: "So German heart and Gaul- 
ish tongue, strong man, lame steed, are suited 
wrong." The foreign language which has been 
forced upon them has done unspeakable harm to 
the upper classes of Alsace in their moral feeling 
and in their spiritual life, and has impressed upon 
the intellectual life of the province the character 
of a bastard culture which is neither fish nor flesh. 
What unhappy creatures these German boys are 
who pass by in their gold-rimmed Lyceum caps 
under the guardianship of an elegant ahhe, and 
whose German souls are bidden to find edification 
in Boileau and Racine, while they speak to the 
servants in a horrible Gaulish perversion of their 
native language, the language of Goethe. 

In the struggle between the independent lang- 
uages of highly civilized nations, flexibility of form 
is unfortunately apt to gain the victory over depth 
and thoroughness of culture. The national char- 
acter of the rising generation ultimately depends 
upon the mothers ; and women find it hard to with- 
stand the charm of brilliant form. As a rule, 
woman — more loyal than man in good things as 
well as in evil — adheres more firmly than he does 
to ancestral ways; the women of Alsace become 
Gaulish faster than the men. This is proved by 
ocular demonstration, and it is confirmed by 
the returns reported from all the popular libraries 
in the province, which show that the women hardly 



What We Demand from France 147 

read any books but French. The language of the 
State, of good society, and of important commer- 
cial transactions, is French. The language of the 
books and newspapers is the same ; for it is better 
to pass over in compassionate silence the barbar- 
ous German translation which the Frenchman, M. 
Schneegans, is in the habit of placing alongside 
of the French text of his Cotirrier du Bas-Rhin. 
Whoever has seen three generations of an Alsatian 
family side by side must have had the growing 
Gallicization of the upper classes brought palpably 
before him. If one reminds these people of the 
glorious German past, a confident "We are French- 
men " helps them over all argument ; and if they are 
men of learning, they are not unlikely, like the 
maire Schutzenberger aforesaid, to add a few pro- 
found phrases on the mutability of all things 
human, as destructive even of national life. The 
public service, the settlement of numerous French- 
men in the province, and manifold family and 
business connections, all hasten this unnatural 
degeneration. Of the great families of the land, 
some have crossed over to the right bank, like 
the Schaumburgs, the Bocklins, the Tiirkheims; 
the rest have, almost without exception, betaken 
themselves to French ways, like the Keinachs, 
the Andlaus, the Vogt von Hunolsteins. It was a 
Zom von Bulach, a scion of the famous old house of 
free imperial citizens {Reichshilrger), who recently 
demanded, in a stormy Chauvinist speech in the 
Corps Legislatif, the fortification of Huningen, to 



148 What We Demand from France 

prevent the Fatherland falling a prey to the 
Germans. 

In contrast with this Gallicization of the edu- 
cated classes, how glorious appears the faithful ad- 
herence of the Alemannic peasant to the usages of 
his ancestors. Here among the simple folk, where 
culture is held of no account, and the whole intellec- 
tual life is comprehended in the moral feelings, the 
German tongue continues to hold unbounded sway, 
and even among the higher classes it has frequently 
remained the language of the feelings and of the 
domestic hearth. The German wanderer, who 
enters a village in the Vosges, is saluted at first by 
some official ordinance or other in French, or by an 
advertisement painted on the wall by the Great 
Paris advertising firms, Chocolat Menier and Au 
Pauvre Diahle. In the village itself everything is 
German; red waistcoats, big fur caps, and three- 
cornered hats, popular costumes of a primitive 
antiquity which survive only in the remote valleys 
of Schwarzwald. The name Gaulish (Wdlsch) is 
often regarded even yet as a term of abuse. The 
maire, the cantonnier , and a few of the younger 
people whose wanderings as handicraftsmen have 
carried them to a great distance, are frequently 
the only persons who speak the foreign tongue 
with facility. All the public decrees with which the 
people are seriously meant to become acquainted 
must be read out in both languages. To teach 
the children in French is either impossible or they 
forget in a few years what it has cost them so much 



What We Demand from France 149 

trouble to acquire. The peasant of the Sundgau 
contemplates the stork's nest on his thatch with 
the same pleasure as the Ditmarsher; he is on as 
intimate terms with his stork as the other with his 
Hadbar; and he receives the payment for lodging, 
which the bird annually throws down, with equal 
conscientiousness. If he reads anything at all, 
he reads the jests of the "Hobbling Messenger" 
{des hinkenden Boten), like his neighbour in the 
Schwarzwald across the river. A rich mine of 
primitive German legends and usages yet remains 
among the woodmen up in the Wasgau, who push 
the trunks of the trees, in the winter time, on 
mighty sleighs {Schlitten), down the steep preci- 
pice. The Gaul bestows on these sturdy fellows 
the exquisite name of SchlitteMrs, 

But the mightiest of all the forces at the root of 
our German ways is Protestantism, which is the 
strong shield of the German language and of Ger- 
man life here, as in the mountains of Transylvania, 
and on the distant shores of the Baltic. After all, 
it is the free life of different creeds side by side 
with one another which remains the strong root of 
our modem German culture; and in this essential 
characteristic, which distinguishes us both from 
the Catholic south and the Lutheran north, Alsace, 
which is divided between the confessions {parti- 
tat esch), fully participates. So long as the peasant 
continues to sing ^' Eiji feste Burg ist unser Gott/^ 
from a German hymn-book, German life will not 
perish in the Wasgau. The loving and energetic 



150 What We Demand from France 

spirit of old Spener, and, after him, of the worthy 
Oberlin, the benefactor of the Stein thai, survives to 
this day in the excellent evangelical pastors of 
Alsace ; and perhaps they are the only men in the 
country who secretly long for its return to Ger- 
many. Any loyal love on the part of the shame- 
fully persecuted Evangelical Church towards the 
land of the Dragonnades, and of the War of the 
Cevennes, must have been out of the question at 
all times. German science — the free and fearless 
spirit of inquiry of the Tubingen school — prevails 
among the admirable scholars of the Protestant 
Faculty at Strassburg, some of whom still lecture 
in German. They owe nothing to the French but 
an active practical sense, which seeks to impress 
the truth which their own minds have recognized 
on the life and constitution of their congregations. 
What is it, .speaking generally, that is healthy 
and energetic in Alsace? what is it that elevates 
these districts above the dark mists of self-indul- 
gence and priestly obscurantism which overhang 
most of the remaining provinces of France? The 
German nature of Alsace, and nothing else. The 
active spirit of its inhabitants, and the ineradi- 
cable impulse towards self-government, which 
even the artifices of Napoleonic prefects could not 
wholly banish, and which refused to bow its head 
before the monarchical socialism of the Second Em- 
pire, are German. Let the worthy members of So- 
ciete Industrielle de Mulhouse believe as long as they 
choose that they are Frenchmen in body and soul, 



What We Demand from France 151 

and set up the inscriptions Place Napoleon and Rue 
Napoleon at the street-comers of their artisan town. 
That admirable enterprise of free civic spirit could 
only have arisen on Germanic soil, just as the 
great city workhouse of Ostwald, near Strassburg, 
could only have been founded by a German city. 
The cites ouvrieres in French towns, in Lille, for 
example, owe their origin to the State. The 
active care of the communes and fathers of famiHes 
for popular education, which has at least succeeded 
in bringing about this result, that on an average 
there are, of a hundred unmarried persons in the 
Haut-Rhin, only from six to seven, and in the Bas- 
Rhin only from two to three, unable to write, is 
altogether German. This seems poor enough in 
comparison with the state of things in Germany, 
but it is brilliant in comparison with that in 
France. The spirit of the popular libraries and 
singing-clubs, which used to be constantly at feud 
with the Prefects, is German. Notwithstanding 
the Gaulish tongue which it uses, the scholarly 
culture, which produces such good fruit in the 
Revue Critique and in the works of the provin- 
cial historians, is German. Even among the 
French-speaking classes, have we not the more 
natural, straightforward, youthful way of German 
life, which has been infected indeed, but not yet 
destroyed, by Celtic immorality? Are not the 
military virtues of the man of Alsace German too? 
Is the same thing not true of his loyalty and dis- 
cipline — of the close application to the military 



152 What We Demand from France 

instruction of each individual soldier, and the de- 
light in accurate firing, which make him alone, 
among the soldiers of France, capable of an effec- 
tive partisan war (Parteigdngerkrieg) , and which 
have created a species of volunteer popular army — 
the franC'tireurs — in his part of the country alone? 
But, alas! when we praise the indestructible 
German nature of the man of Alsace, the subject of 
our praise declines to receive it. He adheres to his 
conviction that he is no Suabian, and that all 
Suabians are yellow-footed. He was introduced 
by France, sooner than we Germans have been, 
into the grand activity of the modem economical 
world. To France he owes a most admirable 
organization of the means of commercial inter- 
course, a wide market, the influx of capital on a 
great scale, and a high rate of wages, which, to this 
day, draws daily labourers in crowds at harvest- 
time from the fields of Baden across the Rhine. 
From the French he has learned a certain savoir- 
faire; his industrial activity, upon the whole, 
stands higher than that of his German neighbour; 
and in special branches — in nursery gardening, 
for instance — he presents a marked contrast to 
the easy-going indifference of the natives of Baden. 
The son of Alsace is bound to his great State not 
merely by ancient loyalty and pride, but by mate- 
rial bonds, the power of which we, in our freer 
political life, generally fail duly to appreciate. A 
bureaucratic centralization possesses this advan- 
tage after all, among a thousand sins, that it 



What We Demand from France 153 

penetrates like a binding mortar into every joint 
of the social edifice, and renders it unspeakably 
difficult to break one of its stones out of the wall. 
What labour will be requisite before the threads 
which lead across from Strassburg and Colmar to 
Paris are all cut! The jonction-nomanie of the 
French, their anxiety to make a profit out of the 
State, even were it by means of a bureau de tabac, 
has penetrated as far as these frontier lands. A 
countless host of officials, pensioners and veterans, 
swarms in this province. All the great institu- 
tions of intercourse and credit are in reality State 
establishments. What a power lies in the hands 
of the Great Eastern Railway [of France], which, 
although a private company in name, is in fact 
connected closely with the State ! If the district is 
given up to Germany, and this railway remains 
what it is, every pointsman and guard on the 
line will contribute to the French propaganda. 

The smallest amount of resistance will probably 
be offered to the reconquest in Lower Alsace, where 
a third of the population is Protestant, and where 
a vigorous intercourse is carried on with Baden 
and the Palatinate. The state of affairs on the 
Upper Rhine is far less promising. A powerful 
clergy is there, adding fuel to the hatred of the 
lively and excitable people against Germany, and 
it finds no counterpoise in the Protestant portion 
of the population, which amounts only to a tithe. 
The manufactories of Mulhausen have their chief 
market in France, although a considerable busi- 



154 What We Demand from France 

ness has been done in the calico and muslin trade 
of the place at the Leipzig fairs since the recent 
treaties of commerce. The German State is 
repugnant to the old reminiscences of this Swiss 
city. Its patrician families assiduously display 
their French sentiments. Its masses of working- 
men, thrown together from long distances, and 
who come, for the most part, from Germany, 
have always welcomed the hollow pathos of the 
Paris demagogues. But it is in German Lorraine 
that we are threatened by the most embittered 
hostility. In a population almost exclusively 
Catholic, German ways of thought and Hfe have 
never found so grand a development as in Alsace ; 
and for more than a century they have been 
abused by all the evil artifices of the French 
bureaucracy — most cynically of all in the old 
Luxemburg districts round Diedenhofen; besides 
which their ordinar}^ intercourse takes the peas- 
antry to two French towns, to Metz and Nancy. 
Most assuredly, the task of reuniting there the 
broken links between the ages is one of the heaviest 
that has ever been imposed upon the political 
forces of our nation. Capital and culture, those 
faithful allies of the German cause in Posen and 
in Schleswig- Hoist ein, are our opponents. Ger- 
man ways of thought and life have been terribly 
discredited in the upper classes of these western 
marches. What we deem horrible, they deem 
sacred. They remember with pride how it was at 
Strassburg that Rouget de I'lsle once composed 



What We Demand from France 155 

those burning lines which threatened the enemies 
of France, the Germans, with death and destruc- 
tion; and how the soldiers' Emperor passed out 
to his war against us through the gate of Auster- 
litz. The city which fought as a heroine in the 
spiritual battles of the Reformation boasts to-day 
in her own phrase, De porter fierement Vepee de la 
France. What appears ridiculous to us seems to 
them to speak for itself. They are not ashamed 
to call themselves ''Monsieur" Schwilgue or 
Stockle. They allow the venerable names of their 
towns to be changed into Gaulish perversions, 
Hke Wasselonne, Cemay, and Selestat. They 
obediently accept the indescribably absurd Ober- 
nai (for Oberehnheim) , and consider it fine to 
write "antwergmestres^* when they are speaking 
in their French historical works of the masters of 
the old guilds (Meister der alien Ziinfte). They 
are astonished at our shrugging our shoulders as we 
contemplate the monument in honour of the indus- 
trial grandees of the place, on the market-place at 
Rappoltsweiler, and see enumerated on it, in the 
style of the tables issued from the Prefectures, 
the names Meyer, Jaques, Muller, Etienne, etc. 
What to us seems freedom, to them appears 
oppression. While taking part in the life of a 
State whose parties bow beneath despotism as 
their taskmaster, without an exception, they 
have lost all perception for the truth that every 
healthy kind of freedom imposes burdens and 
duties. They look with repugnance upon the 



156 What We Demand from France 

fundamental principle of the German State, the 
duty of all men to serve the State in arms, and 
the right of every local community (Gemeinde) 
to manage its own affairs. Yet, with all their 
devotion, they are not regarded by the Gauls as 
their equals. The Frenchman contrives cleverly 
to turn the fresh vigour of the man of Alsace 
to the best advantage for himself; but he laughs 
in secret at these honest tetes carries . It is simply 
impossible to domesticate the modem French 
art of imdergoing a grand revolution of political 
thought and opinion once in every ten years among 
these tough Suabians. Even in our own days, 
just as in those of the First Revolution, it was 
with hesitation and unwillingly that the men 
of Alsace followed the periodically recurring gen- 
eral desertion of the Flag, which is characteristic 
of the party life of the French. When the Presi- 
dent Louis Napoleon was engaged in his notorious 
Emperor's tour through France, and the whole 
country sang the praises of the new idol, he was 
confronted by sturdy Republican pride in Alsace 
alone. Loyalty of this kind is unintelHgible to 
the Frenchman. Even Duruy, who stands nearer 
to our culture than most of his fellow-countrymen, 
remarks, condescendingly, of the population of 
Alsace, after a few words of well-merited encom- 
ium: ^^Mais elle delaisse trop lentement son mauvais 
jargon allemand et son intolerance religieuse.'^ 
Mauvais jargon allemand! This is what is said of 
the mother-tongue, the straightforward Aleman- 



What We Demand from France 157 

nic, which went so warm and kindly to the heart 
of the youthful Goethe! Intolerance religieuse, 
this is how they describe faithful adherence to 
the evangelical faith ! Such is the distance which 
separates the French from the German members 
of their State. 

It is precisely in this that there lies for us a 
pledge of hope. The source of German life is 
choked, but it is not dried up. Tear these men 
out of the foreign soil, and they are as German 
as ourselves. The men of Alsace and Lorraine 
who have emigrated to America range themselves 
regularly with the Germans, and, like the latter, 
are at this day joyously hailing our victories. The 
German spirit of the house of Ludwig Uhland met 
hardly anywhere so clear an echo as in the songs of 
August and Adolf Stober of Alsace. How touch- 
ing is the admonition coming from lips such as 
these to the Strassburgers : 

Around your sons shall wind 

Loyalty's bond from hand to hand, 

And ever shall them bind 

Unto the German fatherland! 

And in Kleeburg there, not far from the Gaisberg 
which the heroes of Lower Silesia stormed in the 
awful fray, stood the cradle of Ludwig Hausser — 
the loyal man, who was the first to relate to us in 
the spirit of a true German the history of our 
War of Liberation. In times past other German 
districts have been sunk in depths of degeneration 



158 What We Demand from France 

as deep as that of Alsace to-day. Under the rotten 
dominion of the Crozier, and the iron yoke of the 
first Empire, the burghers of Cologne and Coblenz 
had hardly been reached by far-off tidings of the 
triumphs of Frederick and the poems of Schiller, 
of all that was great and genuine in modem Ger- 
man history. Ten years of Prussian government 
sufficed to recover these lost ones to German life. 
If at this day foreign ways have roots incompar- 
ably deeper in Colmar and Miilhausen than was 
the case of old on the Lower Rhine, the vigour and 
self -consciousness of the German nation, on the 
other hand, have immeasurably increased since 
that time. The people of Alsace are already 
beginning to doubt the invincibility of their nation, 
and at all events to divine the mighty growth of 
the German Empire. Perverse obstinacy, and a 
thousand French intrigues creeping in the dark, 
will make every step on the newly conquered soil 
difficult for us; but our ultimate success is certain, 
for on our side fights what is stronger than the 
lying artifices of the stranger — nature herself and 
the voice of common blood. 

Ill 

THE CLAIMS OF PRUSSIA 

Who is strong enough to rule these lost lands, and 
to recover them, by a salutary discipline, for Ger- 
man life? Prussia, and Prussia alone. I am well 
aware that there are many sagacious persons in 



What We Demand from France 159 

the North who utter words of warning and entreat 
us to leave that awkward question for the present, 
and, above all, to abstain, at this moment, from 
awakening the wrath of conflicting parties which 
has hardly been put to sleep. Singular error! 
The question which arises at this point is elevated 
above all parties; it is the question, whether a 
German peace is to follow this German war, 
whether the peace and the war are to be one in 
fashion and in spirit, whether, as the German 
swords struck their blows only for the sake of the 
great Fatherland, the statutes of the peace are to 
satisfy the demands of German security and hon- 
our and not the miserable suggestions of particular- 
ism. This is precisely the moment in which it is 
the duty of the Press to speak plainly, while the 
brand of the nation's sacred wrath is still being 
forged in the fire, and before the glorious unanim- 
ity of this war has been overgrown by the petty 
play of parties. The eye of our nation is clear- 
sighted, and its heart is wide enough, if rationally 
instructed, to imderstand what is indispensable for 
the security of Germany. Should a traitor here or 
there be induced by the open expression of those 
national demands, the rejection of which is impossi- 
ble, prematurely to doff his mask and to lift up 
once more his old favourite cry, "Rather French 
than Prussian, " the defection of such gentry would 
do no harm to the German cause. 

If the war progresses on the grand scale in which 
it has commenced, the leader of the Germans will 



i6o What We Demand from France 

conclude peace in the name of the Allies, and cause 
whatever cessions of territory have to be demanded 
to be made to the Allies in common. Further 
arrangements in the conquered territory must then 
be left as a matter for mutual discussion between 
the German confederates. We Germans should 
be most unwilling to exhibit the dreary remains of 
our utter disunion to a peace congress, and to show 
a contemptuous Europe that our poHtical unity is 
very far from being as complete, as yet, as the 
unity of the German army. But if these dis- 
cussions should not lead rapidly and harmoniously 
to a sound conclusion, a resolute and unanimous 
public opinion would have to lighten the difficulties 
of the task. What was it, besides the jealousy of 
foreign countries, which hampered the German 
statesmen of 1815? The uncertainty and con- 
fusion that reigned in the national mind. One 
party wanted to give the Duchy of Alsace to the 
Crown Prince of Wurttemberg, and another to the 
Archduke Charles. Amdt, himself, insisted only 
on securing the freedom of the German river. Let 
us show that we have learned in these great times 
to live while our fathers knew only how to die for 
Germany, and that the unity of the national will 
has succeeded that indeterminate sort of national 
oneness which inspired the men of the Second 
Peace of Paris. 

The current talk in the North is, " Let us reward 
the* South Germans for their loyalty." This is 
one of those vague fashions of speech which is due 



What We Demand from France i6i 

to sincere feeling, but which in times of popular 
excitement might easily lead to dangerous results. 
Oh! if the North Germans who echo these phrases, 
and fancy themselves very magnanimous and 
noble in so doing, could but see how the eyes of 
honest and clear-sighted South Germans flash out 
with anger at such words! We want no reward, 
they say ; if people want to reward us, let them at 
all events not reward the particularism of the 
Courts which we held down with such effort. I 
speak under the impression of earnest warnings, 
which reach me from South German friends, and 
which entreat me to defend the interests of South 
Germany in this review. The course of the 
argument which these politicians press on be- 
half of South Germany is plain and not open to 
question. 

France, they say, will not and cannot honour- 
ably conclude peace until her army and her 
administration are entirely changed. Until a 
thoroughly different popular education has built 
up a new nation round it, the French people will 
never in earnest renounce their natural boundaries, 
or their illusion that the weakness of Germany 
is their strength. We in Upper Germany cannot 
lead our lives in quiet, or witness in contemptu- 
ous confidence the feverish rage of these Gallic 
vandals, so long as Alsace has not been placed 
under a strong protecting power. The Prussian 
Eagle alone is able to keep his grip of what he has 
once pounced upon. In any weaker grasp the 
II 



i62 What We Demand from France 

border country would be but a temporary posses- 
sion. We know better than our friends in the 
North do the strength of the resistance which will 
rise up in Strassburg and Miilhausen against their 
Germanization. Prussian territory must be 
wrapped, like a protecting mantle, round all our 
threatened boundaries from Wesel, past Metz 
and Saarlouis, down to Strassburg and Belfort. 
Prussia may not always be led by strong men. She 
will certainly not be led always by men of genius. 
The time may come when Prussian particularism, 
which is out of heart at present, may again say 
to itself, "Is the shirt not nearer the skin than the 
coat? Is it absolutely necessary that North 
Germany should always defend South Germany?'* 
Such questions ought to be impossible in the 
Germany of the future. It is in that view that 
we wish to bind Prussia to us by the only bond 
which is always sure in politics: the bond of its 
own vital interests. We have always regarded it 
as a misfortune that the State which leads Ger- 
many should be, in appearance at least, exclusively 
North German, but the priceless opportunity to 
leaven it with South German life is given us, so as 
to do away with the misleading and arbitrary 
distinction between North and South for ever. 
Once before, in one of the pettiest periods of its 
history, Prussia filled the httle South German 
Anspach-Baireuth with Prussian political feeling. 
To-day, in the splendour of power and fame, 
she could accomplish a similar task with a like 



What We Demand from France 163 

success. It will be the healing of the German 
Empire if our leading Power learns to like and to 
value South German ways in their home, if the 
citizen forces of her western, and the still immature 
social conditions of her eastern, provinces find their 
counterpoise — in one word, if Prussia includes 
and reconciles within herself all the opposites of 
German life. 

What have people in the North to oppose to such 
solid arguments? Nothing but the self-sufficient 
phrase that Prussia is strong enough to care for no 
annexation of territory. How magnanimous it 
sounds! — but the indolence and pettiness of 
particularism lie behind it. Which of the two 
lines of policy would be the loftier or the more 
German? Is Prussia to enter into a suitable 
engagement, flattering to the vanity of the Court of 
Munich, and then to observe, at a comfortable 
distance, Bavaria struggling to subdue her mutin- 
ous province; or is she herself to undertake that 
watch upon the Rhine which she alone can keep, 
and decisively to take a province which will bring 
nothing at first but trouble and resistance to its 
new masters? Nothing but an exaggerated deli- 
cacy, a false magnanimity, have hitherto prevented 
the North German Press from demanding what is 
necessary, and what the South German papers, 
for example, the courageous Schwdbische Volkszei- 
tung, have long been urging. Every other plan 
which has been suggested for the future of these 
border countries is foolish — so foolish that it 



164 What We Demand from France 

requires some self-command to induce one to refute 
it. What is the use of attempting to answer the 
suggestion that Alsace and Lorraine should form 
a neutral State? Has not Europe had enough of 
that already in the disgusting spectacle of the 
Nation Luxembourgeoise? Only the brain of an 
English Manchester man, surrounded by the mists 
he blows from his pipe of peace, could conceive 
such extraordinary bubbles. No wonder that 
every enemy of Germany should approve of this 
suggestion. No better way has yet been thought 
of to enable France to recover all that she has lost. 
The proposal to entrust this outwork of Ger- 
many to a secondary State appears scarcely more 
unreasonable. One would think we were hurled 
back out of the great year of 1870 into the times 
of the Federal Diet. We seem, again, to hear 
those wise thinkers of the Eschenheimer Gasse, 
who kept warning us so earnestly against the 
flames of centralization, while the marsh- water of 
petty Statedom was rising above our shoulders — 
those gallant riflemen patriots who shouted so 
lustily for the unity of Germany — but with Nurem- 
berg as its capital! Prince and people in Baden 
have acquitted themselves nobly in trying times; 
and we can now fully comprehend, and that per- 
haps for the first time, what it cost them to main- 
tain an honourable national policy here for four 
years in face of the enemy. Are we, in return, 
to impose a burden on that State which could 
not fail to crush it? The plan of founding an 



What We Demand from France 165 

Upper Rhine kingdom of Baden proceeds from 
nothing but a too conscientious study of the map ; 
and an old North German mistake has procured for 
it a few adherents in the North. As Baden has 
reckoned among its sons a long line of distin- 
guished politicians, from Rotteck and Liebenstein 
down to Mathy and Roggenbach, the men of the 
North have accustomed themselves to expectations, 
founded on the intellectual power of the country, 
which no State of the third rank could possibly 
fulfil. In Baden itself people are more modest. 
Every reasonable man shudders at the thought 
of a Diet of Carlsruhe, half made up of the repre- 
sentatives of Alsace. If they allied themselves 
with the same party in Alsace, who could control 
the strong native Ultramontane and Radical 
parties which an intelligent Liberal majority keeps 
in order at present? Such a State would delight 
the eyes of a map-drawer, as the kingdom of the 
Netherlands did, when it was welded out of 
Belgium and Holland; but, like that, it would be a 
political impossibility. 

The Government of Baden no doubt regards the 
prospect of an acquisition which would be the ruin 
of the country with sufficient wisdom and patriot- 
ism. All the more must it be listened to with 
respect, as it is most nearly concerned in the matter, 
when it protests decisively against any increase of 
Bavaria by Alsace. I shall not grope in the filth 
of a petty past; but it is impossible for people in 
Carlsruhe to forget that the desires of Bavaria for 



i66 What We Demand from France 

the Baden Palatinate disturbed the Grand Duchy 
for a whole generation, while Prussia was all 
that time its honourable protector. Would our 
boundaries be safe in Bavarian hands? Let us 
picture to ourselves the Bavarian Government 
under a king less honestly German than Ludwig II, 
surrounded on all sides, as it would be, by the 
insubordinate province, kept in a constant state 
of irritation by France, until at last the bad 
neighbour returns in a favourable hour with the 
proposal: Take all Baden and Wiirttemberg, and 
give us back our own. Even a State has need to 
pray, " Lead me not into temptation ! " What are 
all compacts and federal constitutions against 
the plain fact of the possession of the land? God 
be praised, a result so unworthy as I am describing 
is little to be feared in New Germany! The 
noble blood that reddens the plains of Worth 
and Weissenburg bound the armies of Prussia 
and Bavaria in a close alliance. No new Lord 
Castlereagh can step forward, as his prototype 
did fifty years ago, to tell us scornfully that the 
loosely compacted German Bund is not able to 
defend Alsace. Yet the troublesome question 
presses on us whether Bavaria possesses the in- 
tellectual and the political power which are neces- 
sary to fuse Alsace into union with itself. Facts 
familiar to everyone supply the answer. What 
was it that, in 1849, saved the German-minded 
Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine for the 
kingdom of Bavaria? The sword of Prussia. 



What We Demand from France 167 

The results of Bavarian administration in the 
Palatinate are, to put it mildly, extremely modest. 
Wanting in all creative power, she has indolently 
adopted far too many of the Napoleonic institu- 
tions of the province. It is precisely this despotic 
administration of the French which must be 
rooted out of Alsace. The people of the Palatinate 
are German, body and soul, and yet they have 
remained half strange, half hostile, to the German 
State; and their representative almost always sat 
in the Diet at Munich as a close party of fellow- 
countrymen. The feeble and unnatural body of 
the kingdom had not strength sufficient to break 
down the separate life of the province. And it is 
just that breaking down of a life of unnatural 
separation that is our most serious duty in Alsace. 
Let no man tell us that it matters very little in 
the New Germany to what single State a district 
may be assigned, since the Munich Parliament 
must henceforth be content to play the part of a 
Provincial Diet. To say so is to assume, foolishly, 
that a work has already been completed which can 
develop only slowly in the course of many years. 
The powerful excitement of this war will certainly 
find some statesmanlike expression, but we can- 
not yet foresee the form which it may take. The 
unity of the armies, which has manifested itself so 
splendidly in the war, will continue, beyond all 
question, in time of peace also. From that follows, 
as an immediate corollary, a common diplomacy; 
and from that again a collective German Parlia- 



i68 What We Demand from France 

ment. The North German Confederation must 
and will remain true to those two fixed principles 
which it laid down, not in fear of France, but from 
a true sense of the conditions of Germany. It will 
declare then, as it has done before, that we demand 
the entrance of no South German State; and w^e 
shall not loosen the strong and dearly-bought 
compactness of our Confederation in the very 
smallest degree. It is by no means certain that 
the Bavarian Court will at once enter the Con- 
federation on these conditions. If it should, 
there will still remain very essential differences 
between the separate States. The province of in- 
ternal administration can hardly be affected in 
the slightest degree of federal legislation. 

The administration, the whole new hierarchy 
of the Government offices' — the communes, the 
schools — must all of them be organized in the best 
possible way in Alsace-Lorraine. The Prussian 
administration has shown indisputably, on the 
Rhine, that it is superior, with all its defects, to the 
French, or to that of the little States. Compare 
the later history of the three great Rhenish towns, 
which are limited in their natural development 
by fortress walls. In what wretchedness and 
beggary did Cologne stand in the days of Napoleon 
in comparison with the golden Mainz and the 
prosperous Strassburg! How far the stately 
metropolis of the Lower Rhine surpasses both her 
sisters to-day! All of that is due to the blessing 
of Prussian laws. Prussia alone can undertake the 



What We Demand from France 169 

remorseless sweeping away of the French officials in 
Alsace, which is indispensable, and replace the 
foreign powers by vigorous home ones. Prussia 
alone can steadfastly maintain the state of siege 
which, we may easily imagine, may be necessary 
for a time in some of the districts of the forlorn 
land. The worst fault of the Prussian adminis- 
tration, its perpetual scribbling, will seem innocent 
to the people of Alsace after the corruption and 
the statistical mania of the prefectures. A power- 
ful State, which has impressed its spirit on the 
inhabitants of the Rhine country and the people 
of Posen, will know how to reconcile the separate 
life of the half -French Germans; and just as 
Prussian parties have spread themselves immedi- 
ately, in three or four years, over every part of 
the new provinces, the people of Alsace will one 
day be ready to ally themselves with the various 
parties of Prussia, and cease to form a separate 
faction in the Parliament at Berlin. 

The peace must break many a bond which was 
dear to those borderers. Can Germany venture 
to add the useless cruelty of separating them 
from each other, and giving Metz to Prussia, 
and Strassburg to Bavaria? The peace will cut 
the people of Alsace off from a powerful nation, in 
their connection with which they found their 
honour and their pride. Can Germany humiHate 
them in the hour of their violent liberation, and 
raise the modest white and blue or the red and 
yellow flag where waved the tricolor e of the Rev- 



I70 What We Demand from France 

olution, which once conquered the world? No! 
These Germans have been accustomed to the larger 
views of a great State ; they will not endure being 
anything but Prussians, if they must cease to 
be Frenchmen. Let us give them something in 
exchange for what they have lost — a great and 
glorious State, a powerful capital, a free competi- 
tion for all the offices and honours of a great 
Empire. In the uniformity of a great State they 
have lost all taste for those bewildering conditions 
of South German political life which we ourselves 
often hardly understand. The}^ might learn to be 
Prussian citizens, but they would think it as ridicu- 
lous if they were handed over to a king in Munich, 
and to a supreme king in Berlin. Here, in fact, 
there is no place for those half measures and 
artificial relations. Nothing but the simple and 
intelligible reality of the German State will serve. 
Everything like "federal fortresses," or "territory 
acknowledging no authority between itself and the 
Empire " — or by whatever name the too-clever-by- 
half devices of gambling dilettantes are known — is 
utterly out of the question. 

We, who are old champions of German unity, 
have for six years been demanding the incorpora- 
tion of the Elbe Duchies into the Prussian State, 
although the hereditary claim of a German princely 
house stood in the way. Is this review to plead to- 
day that a little State should insinuate itself into 
the far more dangerously threatened Duchies 
of the Rhine, where no claim of right bars the claim 



What We Demand from France 171 

of Prussia? Once give up the standpoint of Ger- 
man unity, and cease to ask only what is for the 
benefit of the great Fatherland; once begin to 
reckon, like a shopkeeper, what part of the prizes 
of victory should be assigned to each of the con- 
federate allies, and one must be driven to the mani- 
fest absurdity that the border territories should be 
split up into I know not how many fragments. It 
would be a worthy repetition of that ludicrous 
sub-division of the Department of the Saar which 
brought the sarcasms of Europe on us in 181 5. At 
that time, when the consciousness of the strength 
of Prussia was yet in its infancy, Gneisenau could 
still propose that Prussia should hand over Alsace 
to Bavaria, and receive the territory of Anspach- 
B aireuth in exchange . All such barters of territory 
are out of the question to-day. The nation knows 
how casually its internal boundary lines have 
been drawn. It tolerates those barriers of sepa- 
ration ; but it is with a quiet dislike, and without 
any serious confidence ; and it looks unfavourably 
on any attempt to draw s ' milar lines anew . Prussia 
is not in a condition to hand over its own share 
of the rewards of victory to each separate country 
and people. If it were really so — if the friendh- 
ness of the Court of Munich to the Confederation 
were to be bought only by the cession to them of 
at least Northern Alsace, including Hagenau 
and Weissenburg — what an ugly escape it would 
be out of our difficulties! how repulsive to the 
people of Alsace! But what is essential — the 



172 What We Demand from France 

uninterrupted boundary-line stretching from Died- 
enhofen to Mulhausen — can never be given up by 
Prussia without serious injury to Germany. 

We are told in warning tones of the objections 
of Europe. If you go to the foreigner for counsel 
he will most likely suggest to you that the Grand 
Duke of Hesse, with his Herr von Dalwigk, should 
be created King of Alsace. It is so, and we are 
surrounded by secret enemies. Even the un- 
worthy attitude of England has a deeper root than 
her mere indolent love of peace — it springs from 
her unspoken mistrust of the incalculable power 
of New Germany. In company with the Great 
Powers, Switzerland and the Netherlands see 
our growing strength with suspicion. Watched 
as we are by angry neighbours, we must trust 
gallantly in our own right and in our sword. If 
Germany is powerful enough to tear the border 
country away from France, she can venture, 
without troubling herself about the reluctance of 
foreign countries, to hand them over to the pro- 
tectorate of Prussia. 

But the solution of the question of the people of 
Alsace involves the nearest future of the German 
State. For Bavaria, strengthened by Alsace, and 
hemming in all her South German neighbours, 
would be the Great Power of the German South. 
No man who comprehends this great time would 
dream of replacing the unlucky dualism of Austria 
and Prussia by a new dualism of Prussia and 
Bavaria, between which a powerless Baden and a 



What We Demand from France 173 

weak Wurttemberg would be kept feebly oscillating. 
The day for the secondary States of Germany to rise 
into fresh importance is past for ever. The first 
Napoleon created the kingdom of the South with 
the express intent that that seeming sovereignty 
might bar the way against a real and powerful 
German kingdom, and that its apparent authority 
might undermine the real strength of Germany. 
By their German loyalty these sovereigns have 
deserved the thanks of the whole nation to-day. 
They have obtained our forgiveness for the fault 
of their original existence. The blood which had 
to flow before North and South could be united 
has flowed, thank God, in battle against the 
hereditary enemy and not in civil war. Even we 
radical partisans of unity are delighted, and have 
no intention now of ever diminishing the authority 
of the Bavarian Crown in opposition to the wishes 
of the Bavarian people themselves. Why should 
we be asked to increase the power of the second- 
ary States, which is unquestionably too great at 
present for any permanent national existence? 
Why should we celebrate our victory over the third 
Napoleon by strengthening the creation of the 
first? We are determined to secure the unity of 
Germany, and to leave no treacherous German 
balance of power. 

Deep-thinking persons advise us to reflect 
whether the augmentation of its territory might 
not predispose Bavaria to enter the German 
Confederation. Those who talk so have little 



174 What We Demand from France 

notion of the power of the national idea. The 
entry of Bavaria is merely a question of time, 
and it must come as surely as the blossom passes 
into fruit. If Alsace be first made Prussian, and 
then admitted, along with Baden, into the Ger- 
man Confederation, we may rest secure against the 
blindness of the sovereigns of Munich, and wait 
in patience till the sense of what will be to her 
an advantage constrains Bavaria to come in. If 
Alsace fell to Bavaria, our European policy could 
not rise out of its everlasting uncertainty, or our 
German policy surmount the feeble vacillation 
of its past. There is only one way in which the 
jealousy of foreign Powers can prevent a just 
peace for Germany — they may try to separate 
Bavaria from Prussia. If this be prevented, 
pubHc opinion. North and South, will declare 
itself unanimously, "It is our will that Alsace 
and Lorraine should become Prussian, because 
it is only so that they will become German." 
The spirit of the nation has already acquired a 
wonderful force in these blessed weeks; and it is 
able, when it declares itself unanimously in favour 
of this clear and straightforward course, to cure 
the Court of Munich of sickly and ambitious 
dreams, which an intelligent Bavarian policy 
can never encourage. 

The people of Alsace have learned to despise 
this Germany, broken into fragments. They will 
learn to love us when the strong hand of Prussia 
has educated them. We are no longer dreaming, 



What We Demand from France 175 

as Amdt did many years ago, of a new German 
Order, whose task it was to be to guard the border- 
land. The sober and upright principles which we 
have applied in all newly taken provinces are 
completely applicable here in the West. After a 
short period of transition, under a strict dictator- 
ship, the new districts may enter without danger 
into the full enjoyment of the rights of the Prusso- 
German constitution. When the official world has 
once been cleared by the moderate use of pensions, 
every attempt at treachery will be repressed with 
relentless severity; but native officials who know 
the country will be employed here, as they have 
been everywhere, in the new provinces. Even 
the good old Prussian fashion, according to which 
the troops that garrisoned the fortresses usually 
came from the provinces in which they were 
situated, may be applied here cautiously after a 
time. We Germans despise the babyish war 
against stone and bronze, in which the French 
are adepts. We left the monuments of Hoche 
and Marceau standing, in honour, in the Depart- 
ment of the Lower Rhine, and we have no intention 
of transgressing against any of the glorious memo- 
ries of the people of Alsace and Lorraine. Still 
less shall we meddle with their language. The 
German State must, of course, speak German only; 
but it will always practise the mild regulations it 
has adopted in the mixed districts of Posen and 
Schleswig-Holstein. It would contradict all our 
Prussian ways of thinking were we to assail with 



176 What We Demand from France 

violence the customs of domestic life. All our 
hope rests on the re-awakening of the free German 
spirit. When once the mother- tongue is taught, 
purely and honestly — when the Evangelical 
Church can again move about in undisturbed 
liberty — when an intelligent German provincial 
Press brings back the country to the knowledge 
of German life — the cure of its sickness will have 
begun. Is it idle folly to give expression to the 
hope which rises unbidden in a scholar's mind? 
Why should the great University of Strassburg, 
restored again after its disgraceful mutilation, not 
bring as many blessings to the Upper Rhine pro- 
vinces as Bonn has done to the Lower? Another 
Rhenana in Upper Germany would certainly be 
a worthy issue of the German war, which has 
been a struggle between ideas and sensuous 
self-seeking. 

The work of liberation will be hard and toil- 
some; and the first German teachers and officials in 
the estranged districts are not men to be envied. 
The monarchical feeling of the German people 
there has been thoroughly broken up by hateful 
party fights. The Ultramontanes on the right 
bank will soon conclude a close alliance with 
those on the left; and there will be found, even 
among the German Liberals, many good souls 
ready trustfully to re-echo the cry of pain which 
the people of Alsace will raise against the fury of 
Borussic officialism. But the province cannot, 
after all, long continue to be a German Venice. 



What We Demand from France 177 

Single families of the upper classes may migrate 
indignantly into foreign countries, as the patricians 
of Danzig once fled before the Prussian Eagle. 
The rest will soon adapt themselves to the German 
life, just as the Polonized German nobility of West 
Prussia have resumed their old German names 
since they became Prussian subjects. Even the 
material advantages which the Prussian State 
brings with it are considerable: lighter taxes 
better distributed, and finances better arranged; 
the opening of the natural channels of commerce 
for the country of the Saar and the Moselle; the 
razing of those useless fortifications of Vauban, 
which, maintained in the interest of the traditional 
war policy of the French, have hitherto limited the 
progress of so man}^ towns of Alsace. Even the 
manufacturing industry of the country will dis- 
cover new and broad openings, naturally after 
a trying period of transition, in East Germany. 
But all this is of secondary importance as compared 
with the ideal advantages which they will derive 
from their German political life. And are these 
German lads to grumble because they are no longer 
compelled to learn Gaulish? Will the citizens be 
angry with us for ever when they find that they are 
permitted freely to elect their own burgomaster? 
When they have to deal with well-educated, 
honourable German-speaking officials ? When we 
offer them, in place of their worthless Conseils 
Generaux, a Provincial Diet, with an independent 
activity; and in place of their Corps Legislatif a. 



178 What We Demand from France 

powerful Parliament? When their sons will all 
be entitled to pass a brief period of service in the 
neighbourhood of their own homes, instead of 
wasting long years as homeless soldiers of fortune 
in migratory regiments? When they mingle un- 
molested in the numerous unions and gatherings 
of our free and joyous social life? The deadly 
hatred which the Ultramontane clergy show 
toward the Prussian State is the happiest omen 
for the future. Such an enmity must draw all 
the Protestants, and all the Catholics who can 
think freely, in this province to the side of 
Prussia. 

Humbled and torn by contending parties, 
France will find it very difficult to think of a war of 
vengeance for the next few years. Give us time, 
and it is to be hoped that Strassburg may then 
have risen out of her ruins, and that the people of 
Alsace may already have become reconciled to 
their fate. Their grandchildren will look back one 
day as coldly and strangely on the two-century-long 
French episode in the history of their German 
district as the Pomeranians now do on the century 
and a half of Swedish government. No German 
soil anywhere has ever repented placing itself 
under the protection of Prussia when it passed out 
of the subjection to the foreigner, which is, taken 
at the best of it, but a splendid misery. 

Who knows not Uhland's Minster sage, the 
beautiful poem which expresses so finely and so 
truly the love which the Germans bear to the land 



What We Demand from France 179 

of Goethe's youth? The old dome begins to 
shake as the young poet ascends the tower. 

A movement through the mighty work, 

As though, in wondrous wise, 
Its body travailed to give birth 

To what unfinished lies. 

Oh, Ludwig Uhland, and all of you who dreamt 
of a great and free Germany in the desolate days 
bygone, how far stronger than your dreams are the 
days in which we are living now ! How much else 
that was unfinished then has yet to be bom anew 
in the restored German land! It is all but three 
hundred years since a Hohenzollern, the Margrave 
Johann Georg, chosen as coadjutor of Strassburg, 
bore the title of Landgrave in Alsace; but his 
young State did not dare to defend the claim. 
The great stream of German popular power which 
burst forth and rolled its mighty waters over the 
Slav country of the north-east is flowing back 
westward to-day, to fertilize anew its former bed, 
now choked up — the fair native lands of German 
civilization. In the same Western Marches, where 
our ancient Empire endured its deepest disgrace, 
the new Empire is completed by German victories ; 
and the Prussia which has so often and so shame- 
fully been evil-spoken of by German lips is building 
up the State, which is destined to march on, proud, 
thoughtful, warlike, from centiiry to century. 



THE INCORPORATION OF 

ALSACE-LORRAINE AS AN IMPERIAL 

PROVINCE IN THE GERMAN EMPIRE 

{A Speech in the Reichstag) 

Gentlemen, 

A man from the Upper Rhine province might 
be pardoned if the weighty words of the first 
paragraph of the motion stimulated him to make a 
pompous speech. Everywhere in our beautiful 
land we see the bloody traces of the French, from 
that hill in Freiburg where Louis XIV built his 
three castles, his Defiance of Germany, dow^n 
to the ruined towers of the Castle of Heidelberg. 
We have looked hundreds of times with silent 
sorrow at the summits of the Vosges. It would 
be quite pardonable if now a man from the Upper 
Rhine proudly expressed his joy at feeling how 
everything has quite altered, how confidently we 
look into the future, glad at the thought that the 
German sword has reconquered the old frontier 
territory. But, gentlemen, I regard it as more 
worthy of us, even to-day, not to abandon that 
simple and modest tone which, thank God, is 
customary in this House. Our countrymen the 

1 80 



Alsace an Imperial Province i8i 

Alsatians, who now return into our kingdom, have 
under their old masters been satiated to disgust 
with great pompous phrases. We would like to 
accustom them already now to the fact that the 
German way of dealing with things is simpler 
and more modest. 

Allow me, gentlemen, to commence with a 
confession, which I make not in my name only, 
but in the name of many here in the House. I 
could have wished as early as some months ago 
that the first paragraph of the motion contained 
an additional clause, i. e., the words, "The two 
provinces will be incorporated with the Prussian 
State." I wished that for a very practical reason. 
I said to myself. The task of re-incorporating these 
alienated races of German stock into our country 
is so great and difficult that it can be trusted only 
to experienced hands, and where is there a political 
power in the German Empire which has so well 
proved its talent for Germanization as glorious old 
Prussia? I, who am not a born Prussian, can well 
say so, without incurring the reproach of boasting. 
This State has rescued the Prussians themselves 
from Poland, the Pomeranians from Sweden, the 
East Frisians from Holland, the inhabitants of the 
Rhine provinces from France, and still daily ad- 
vances some inches further eastward the toll-gates 
of German civiHzation. It was my opinion that to 
this well-tested Power we should entrust the task 
of being also in the West the champion and aug- 
menter of the German Empire. I thought, more- 



i82 Alsace an Imperial Province 

over, the Alsatians have become only too alienated 
from us as members of a centralized foreign State ; 
with all the greater energy therefore should one 
compel them to come into a German unitary State, 
into the firmly-compacted strength of Prussian 
political life. Finally, it would be a good thing 
both for Prussia and for Germany if Germany's 
leading State were to comprise numerous South 
German elements. Prussia, if it is to understand 
and guide Germany, must learn to value within 
itself and do justice to the South German character. 
These were the reasons which some months ago 
made me hope that the incorporation of the two 
provinces in Prussia might be proclaimed. This 
hope, gentlemen, is completely shattered; it was 
shattered already on that day in September when 
the Prussian royal power declared in Munich that 
it wished for no increase of territory. All this 
happened at a time when the German Reichstag 
did not yet exist. We have no more to pronounce 
judgment on matters which are settled, but accept 
circumstances as they are, and now ask: How are 
we to set to work to fill this Imperial Province, 
this common possession of all Germany, with 
German civilization, in order to make it actually a 
member of the German Empire ? The task appears 
to me, gentlemen, not merely theoretically, but 
also practically, very difficult. The only two for- 
mer political phenomena which show some simi- 
larity to the life of our Empire awaken little 
confidence in my mind. The general provinces of 



Alsace an Imperial Province 183 

the United Netherlands succeeded as little as the 
common administered districts of the Swiss Con- 
federates in maintaining their vigour for any 
length of time. The former have become in our 
century provinces of a homogeneous State, enjoy- 
ing equal rights, and the latter have become 
equally privileged cantons of an alliance of States. 
But we do not approach this new province with 
the covetousness of the old Swiss Confederates, 
nor with the lazy pride of the Dutch, but with the 
honest wish to bring to our newly-won brothers our 
German character, the best of our possessions, our 
mother-tongue and its literature, and all the noble 
elements of German civilization. The task is 
unspeakably difficult, and I wish to ask you not to 
make it more difficult by academic disputes regard- 
ing the question, What is unitary and what is fed- 
eral? These are theoretical questions which in 
my opinion have already occupied too much room 
in the discussions of the Commission. 

We have heard in the Commission the distinct 
assertion that the imperial province is the first step 
to the unitary State. On the other hand, I have 
heard from many of my friends that the imperial 
province represents the true triumph of federalism. 
I ask. Whither will these academic disputes con- 
duct us? We wish here honestly to acknow- 
ledge the constitution of the Confederation, as 
it has been formed, with all its faults, and we 
wish to say without more ado that what has been 
done in the West affords no precedent for what 



i84 Alsace an Imperial Province 

might happen in Central Germany. There in the 
West we have to regulate provinces hitherto 
belonging to a foreign empire, in which at present 
there is no legally constituted State authority. 
In Germany there are States with constitutional 
dynasties, and no less constitutional diets, and 
what we do and consider necessary in Alsace does 
not impose limits on what we may some day 
be able to settle for the separate German States 
with their actually existing constitutional order. 
Let us then approach the question without fur- 
ther ado, and allow me to ask. What should we do 
for the Alsatians in order to win them for Ger- 
many? I find myself in complete agreement with 
what the Commission says; we wish to treat our 
new fellow-countrymen from the first moment as 
Germans, and therefore we wish to instil into them 
from the beginning some of the fundamental 
ideas of German political law which form, so to 
speak, the political atmosphere which we breathe. 
Among these fundamental ideas of German 
political law I reckon the monarchy. The Alsa- 
tians, like all Frenchmen, have too much grown 
out of the habit of relying on the blessing of 
monarchy. Bourbons, Princes of Orleans, Napo- 
leons, and Republican experiments have pressed 
on each others' heels in swift alternation, and 
after all the changes nothing remains but the 
unalterable despotism of the prefects. Here it is 
our part to show that we Germans imderstand 
monarchy in a much higher, nobler sense. 



Alsace an Imperial Province 185 

We wish to honour our new fellow-countrymen 
by giving them the most powerful and leading 
dynasty that we possess; and when hereafter the 
time comes when some of the old imperial castles 
in Alsace are built up again, then we need not be 
ashamed to set up the eagle of the Hohenzollerns 
by the Hon of the Hohenstaufens, which still keeps 
watch on the King's Tower by Schlettstadt. 
But the monarchy, the imperial power which 
the Reichstag will set up there in Alsace, shall 
possess all the inalienable rights of monarchy, and 
among these I count as the least this one : that in a 
monarchic State nothing can happen against the 
expressed will of the monarch. In the further 
course of the debate I should like to draw your 
serious attention to this point. Sacred among 
these fundamental ideas of German political life I 
reckon the universal duty of bearing arms, our 
national military power. As you know, there 
has been lately an Assembly of Notables from 
Alsace in Strassburg, and among many more pro- 
per and easily satisfied requests it has also ex- 
pressed the wish that the introduction of our law 
of military service might be postponed as long as 
possible. To this I beg to reply: This wish pro- 
ceeds from the scanty knowledge of German 
life which still prevails in Alsace ; it proceeds in the 
first place from the vague idea that there may some 
day be a war with France, and the hearts of the 
Alsatians revolt against the thought of fighting 
against their old fellow-countrymen. But we 



i86 Alsace an Imperial Province 

cannot come to an understanding with the Alsa- 
tians until they give up such vague expectations, 
and learn to regard their present condition as one 
which will last for ever. Further, that wish 
proceeds from a confusion of the French and Ger- 
man military establishments. Our Army is not 
an aggressive power intended within a measured 
interval to return home with a certain amount 
of military glory ; it is the nation in arms, it is the 
great school of courage, of manly discipline, of 
moral self-sacrifice on the part of the whole flower 
of the nation, and from this great school we do not 
wish to exclude the Alsatians at the outset. On 
the contrary, I say that the German law of mih- 
tary service should be introduced as soon as the 
economic conditions of the frontier territory admit 
of it. 

Further, I count, gentlemen, among the essential 
fundamental ideas of German political life the 
noble freedom of our intellectual, and especially of 
our religious, culture. In these last few days a 
step has been taken towards this goal — one of 
those steps of sound statecraft whose value is only 
recognized by later generations. A new epoch 
of civihzation has begun in Alsace on the happy 
day when the good old Prussian rule of compul- 
sory school-attendance was introduced. On this 
foundation of the national school I wish to see the 
structure of German grammar-school education 
rise, which is not bound by the monotonous rules 
of the French lycees, but allows free scope to the 



Alsace an Imperial Province 187 

teacher's personality. Above all, we wish to see a 
university rise in the frontier territory. It should 
not be a district university — of such we possess 
plenty; it should be equipped with a truly royal 
munificence; it should be a German university. 
If nowadays a new university is to enter among the 
considerable number of her sisters, and maintain 
her place in this severe rivalry, she must possess a 
character of her own, she must be a personality 
distinct from all others. But the special character 
of the University of Strassburg — if indeed the 
Federal Council has a regard for what is truly 
German — should consist in the freedom of the 
humanist sciences, not in professional studies. 
Alsace, the old country of the German humanist, 
should once more witness a revival of free science 
in its capital. 

Closely connected with this is the duty of 
introducing into Alsace that peace between 
religious creeds which is Germany's glory, the 
complete hitherto too much disturbed equality 
of rights between the Evangelical and Catholic 
Churches, whose traditional privileges we do not 
in the least think of encroaching upon. 

Furthermore, we should grant the Alsatians at 
once the rights of German citizenship as a com- 
pensation for what they have lost, the possibility 
of giving practical proof of their abilities in the 
whole of France which they have hitherto enjoyed. 

Then I wish that in the shortest possible time, 
in a time which indeed the Government only can 



i88 Alsace an Imperial Province 

securely fix, the German market should be open to 
Alsace. This country, thanks to its perverted Bona- 
partist education, is only too much accustomed 
to attach very great weight to material gains. 
It is only natural that we should first attach them 
to ourselves by material advantages, for it is on 
this basis that a spiritual approximation will be 
completed. 

Then there is another fundamental idea of 
German political life. We wish and demand for 
Alsace self-government in the German sense, the 
self-government which was recently outlined for 
us by the Imperial Chancellor. It is undeniable, 
gentlemen, that it is a bold idea to make the 
experiment of free self-government there in Alsace ; 
for every form of self-government depends in the 
first place upon the higher classes, and it is pre- 
cisely these classes which are the least friendly 
towards us. There will be many a disappoint- 
ment, for German self-government consists less in 
extended electoral rights than in the fulfilment 
of difficult duties of honorary service in com- 
munities and districts. But I think we should 
pluck up courage and do quickly what is necessary. 
I wish to see an early election of the mayors, and 
an early election of the enlarged general councils. 
When a danger is present, we wish to learn to know 
it, to look it in the face, and to adopt our measures 
accordingly. 

But now allow me to say just as openly what we 
cannot offer the Alsatians, if the safety of the 



Alsace an Imperial Province 189 

German Empire is not to be impaired. I believe 
we have the pleasure to see to-day upon the plat- 
form deputies from Alsace among the audience; 
at any rate, every word which is spoken to-day 
in the House will be read in Alsace. It will seem 
to our new fellow-countrymen somewhat strange 
if, as soon as they join us, we tell them which of 
their wishes we consider cannot be fulfilled, but 
that I think is the German custom. The Alsatians 
have been for years past fed with promises and 
promises; they have thereby acquired a habit of 
mistrust towards every government which rules 
them — a mistrust which has become a character- 
istic feature of the French people. But our habits 
are German; we do not promise the Alsatians too 
much — but then, gentlemen, we keep our word. 
The Imperial Chancellor has indeed recently 
exhorted us not to look too far ahead ; but I regret 
that I cannot altogether obey this warning. Why 
should I keep back, gentlemen, what everyone 
thinks in secret? Years ago, when the name of 
Bismarck was the most hated in all Germany, 
I defended the great poHcy of our leading 
statesman with all my heart; I shall therefore 
be allowed to point out a danger which lies in the 
fact that such an extraordinary man stands at the 
head of German affairs. It is the habit of extra- 
ordinary statesmen to count on themselves and 
their superior strength, and, so to speak, to make 
institutions to fit themselves. They can create 
institutions which are obscure, confused, and 



I90 Alsace an Imperial Province 

difficult to control, though they believe, and 
rightly, that they can manage them. But we, 
gentlemen, should remember the smaller men who 
will hereafter follow Prince Bismarck. I cannot 
reconcile it to my conscience, as a representative of 
the people, to stand on a ship as it were with my 
eyes bandaged and to sail out into a sea full of 
reefs, simply trusting that a weather-proof pilot is 
at the helm. We should all know the sea which 
our keel ploughs, and the rocks which we wish to 
avoid. Among these "rocks," the impossible 
wishes which are cherished in Alsace, I regard as 
the first the desire expressed by the Notables that 
the province Alsace-Lorraine should be changed 
into a State. I consider this idea as altogether 
objectionable ; it is another instance of one spring- 
ing from lack of knowledge of German hfe. We 
have been contending vigorously, gentlemen, dur- 
ing many years for the unity of Germany ; we have 
seen in the course of this century hundreds of 
small German States collapse; we are now pre- 
pared as men of good feeling to respect and to spare 
the few States which remain, because they are no 
longer in a condition to be exactly injurious to 
the might of the German Empire. But to create 
a new State in addition to the already too great 
existing number, now when we are hard at work 
counteracting the German tendency to division, 
to form afresh a State out of three departments 
which never in the course of their history were a 
State, to cultivate a new half-German provincial- 



Alsace an Imperial Province 191 

ism on the severely endangered frontier: that, 
gentlemen, I call striking our own face. 

Let us draw some deductions from the foregoing 
considerations. I find in the clauses of the pro- 
posed law, which for the rest I do not regard 
exactly as a masterpiece, an excellent passage on 
the sixth page, in which it is stated that according 
to the spirit of the constitution of the German 
Empire every federal State should possess a repre- 
sentative assembly to administer the government 
and to take part in legislation. I am glad to hear 
this declaration from the Federal Council. My 
political friends and I intend to make use of this, 
this autumn, in the case of the fortunate land of 
Mecklenburg, and to ask the representatives of 
Mecklenburg whether such a representative 
assembly really exists there. This old German 
principle should now be applied, but only as it 
is possible in a province which neither is nor will be 
a State. I should not like to have a diet in Strass- 
burg possessing the same powers as that of 
Stuttgart or Munich, but I should like one or two 
or three provincial assemblies, according to cir- 
cumstances. That is a question of administrative 
efficiency. The real centre of legislature shall 
remain here in this House. The Alsatians will 
hereafter be represented among us, only by sixteen 
representatives, it is true, but their importance will 
be proportionately much greater than their num- 
ber, because the}^ will possess the immense supe- 
riority of special knowledge, and the Alsatians can 



192 Alsace an Imperial Province 

rely upon it that their demands will be considered 
by us. The great danger, the most serious matter 
for consideration regarding the Imperial Province, 
is that we might easily artificially cherish there 
a new provincialism of the most unwholesome 
kind, which would be constantly fomented afresh 
by French agents. There are certainly many 
easy-going people who say that Alsatian provincial- 
ism is the bridge between the French and German 
nationalities. But I ask, gentlemen, is it absolutely 
necessary to carry coals to Newcastle? Must we 
cherish a provincialism which is already flourish- 
ing vigorously ? There lives in Alsace a provincial- 
ism similar to that which made the Pomeranians 
patriotic Swedes, and made the Hanoverians proud 
of the three Crowns of England, a provincialism 
more firmly and deeply rooted than anywhere else 
in Germany. It seems to me to be our proper task 
to oppose it, and to take care that it does not 
become a danger; and therefore I also wish for 
this province no Alsatian officials. There should 
be no separate life there; the educated youth of the 
country should not grow accustomed, as they say 
with us at home, to remaining "on the spot. " You 
know what the conferring of citizenship in Ger- 
many has hitherto signified regarding this matter. 
How few Reuss-Schleizers have entered the Prus- 
sian State-service, although they are able to do so! 
If we give the frontier territories an independent 
class of officials, the educated Alsatians will grow 
accustomed to remaining at home, and will become 



Alsace an Imperial Province 193 

more and more estranged from the Germans. I 
wish for a class of officials which the Kaiser can 
transfer under certain circumstances to the omin- 
ous places Schwelm and Stallupohnen. ^ 

Yes, gentlemen, that is practical German unity. 
That is the peculiar quality of all real political 
greatness that under certain circumstances it can 
become unpleasant for individuals. We have a 
superfluity of centrifugal elements in Germany. 
We want to take care that there should be some 
classes who belong to the whole of Germany. 
Among these I reckon in the first place ourselves, as 
representatives of the whole nation; and secondly, 
the civil servants of the Empire, who, please 
God, will be ever more numerous and powerful. 
For the same reason I desire, moreover, and I 
believe that is a wish shared by the Alsatians 
themselves, that there should not be any foolish 
experiment with a princely governor, a prince who 
must keep a Court. Such a prince (I say it with 
all respect for those of high birth) can only count 
as one of the worst officials, because he must 
keep a Court. The kinds of society which can 
be won with such courtly tinsel are of such a 
kind that I at any rate gladly dispense with their 
support. 

Moreover, the Alsatians should have no legal 
claim to be governed as an undivided province. 
It is in my opinion merely a question of adminis- 
trative efficiency whether you divide the country 

* Extreme east of Prussia. 
13 



194 Alsace an Imperial Province 

into one, two, or three departments. Here I 
would like to draw your attention to a point 
of view which has hitherto been little regarded 
in Germany. I received, some days ago, a 
letter from one of the most distinguished and 
experienced Alsatians, a man of unmixed French 
blood, who nevertheless possesses enough political 
intelligence to perceive the unavoidability of the 
new circumstances and to adapt himself to them. 
He says to me, "Our greatest fear is this, lest we 
should be treated in the same way as the French 
Lorrainers. Here in Alsace, where German blood 
flows in the people's veins, it will soon be possible 
to proceed with mildness; in Lorraine severity 
alone will be of use. We should be displeased if 
we were treated from the same point of view as 
these obstinate Lorrainers." 

I do not know, gentlemen, whether my corre- 
spondent is right, and I believe here in the whole 
House there is no one, not even the best-informed 
of us. Count Luxburg himself, who could say with 
certainty that matters will turn out as the writer 
of the letter asserts. But if it is really so, if 
actually the feeling in French Lorraine differs 
so widely from that of German Lorraine and Ger- 
man Alsace, then it would be better to centralize 
the government in Berlin, and to set up three in- 
dependent departmental authorities who could pro- 
ceed in a different way on the Moselle from that on 
the Rhine and the 111. At any rate, it is better 
that the Government should now make a mis- 



Alsace an Imperial Province 195 

take, than that we should make a false step in 
legislation. 

Let me, in conclusion, gentlemen, put some 
separate questions. As regards the necessity of 
the dictatorship, we are all here in the House, as in 
Alsace, I suppose, agreed. I hope the proposal to 
summon deputies from Alsace hither as early as the 
autumn will meet with no approval in this House ; 
it would be in my opinion a sin against the Alsa- 
tians themselves. One should not lead a people in- 
to temptation ; one should not make demands on 
the political intelligence of a people which are 
beyond average human power to meet. It is not 
on our account that I fear Alsatian deputies being 
called here too soon, for we are strong enough 
to defy such a danger. But what sort of mo- 
tives could they be which could as early as this 
bring about a complete change of mind in the 
Alsatians? A few months ago they elected 
Gambetta to the French National Assembly ; they 
have since learnt to know our soldiers, and learnt 
so much — that we are not the devils we are said to 
be — but we are not in any way justified in expect- 
ing affection and real devotion from Alsace. The 
reasons which as early as this could bring about 
reasonable elections could only be materialistic 
ones, and we cannot allow such a moral confusion 
in the people's ideas to be produced. With sound 
German pride we have despised the Bonapartist 
jugglery of universal suffrage. I think that with 
the officials whom we found on our arrival there, 



196 Alsace an Imperial Province 

with the well-oiled machine of bureaucratic in- 
fluence on the elections, we could have evoked a 
strong majority for the incorporation of the pro- 
vince into Germany. I thank God that we have 
been spared this disgraceful spectacle, and I wish 
therefore that we quietly wait awhile. Let us wait 
till the countenances of our fellow-countrymen, 
distorted by grief, fear, and passion, have become 
smooth again ; later on they will show us their real 
faces. 

Then I must once more remind you of the 
necessity of preserving our Emperor's honour there 
in the Imperial Province. We should not bring 
him into the position, which is unworthy of him, of 
having to carry out laws against which he himself 
has pronounced his opinion quite recently. It is 
a great danger for a land with such weak mon- 
archic traditions to bring the person of the mon- 
arch into a false dependent position. 

Now a word about the rights which we must 
reserve to ourselves. 

I think that to grant to Alsace the right that 
the Reichstag should approve whatever the 
dictatorship resolves upon would be dangerous 
both for it and its inward peace. It would be 
really tantamount to challenging contradiction 
and agitation against the Emperor's laws if every 
Alsatian could say to himself, ''We can get every- 
thing reversed through the Reichstag in a few 
weeks, if we only scream loud enough!" In this 
way we shall reach no result. On the contrary, I 



Alsace an Imperial Province 197 

consider it right to reserve for the Reichstag the 
control over the money liabilities of the province. 
I think that necessary in order to prevent a new 
kind of State being formed there by mistakes of the 
dictatorship, and by seeking to impose on the 
province a burden such as only a State is accus- 
tomed to bear. That would be, as I fear, the first 
step towards the founding of a new kind of inter- 
mediary State — a step which I could never approve. 
Finally, since we have reserved to ourselves 
such modest rights as long as the dictatorship lasts, 
it is not less than fair that we shorten its duration. 
The appointment of January, 1873, as its Hmits, 
will, I expect, be approved by the House. If it 
was a question of allowing the Imperial Chancellor 
to govern there with full powers I would allow 
a few months more. But it is beyond human 
power to fulfil simultaneously the duties of an 
Imperial Chancellor and a Governor of Alsace. If 
the attempt was made, the management of present 
affairs would necessarily fall into the hands of a 
few Privy Councillors whom most of us do not 
even know by name, and who, being anonymous, 
would be free from the control even of public 
opinion. I should consider it unwarrantable to 
entrust dictatorial power for any length of time to 
such second-class officials. It is perhaps more 
wholesome for the Alsatians themselves that they 
should make an experiment as early as 1873, 
a year before they have another election. That 
would afford an opportunity to eliminate the last 



198 Alsace an Imperial Province 

remnants of bitterness which may be slumbering in 
the souls of this people ; a year afterwards intelli- 
gence and cool calculation may assert themselves. 
And now, gentlemen, allow me to close with a 
request which in the mouth of a new-comer may 
seem presumptuous. Recently in the Press the 
reproach has been levelled at us in a not very 
dignified way that the Reichstag does not rise to 
the height of these great days, and that its trans- 
actions do not show the intellectual capacity which 
such a proud and aspiring nation must demand 
of its representatives. I believe, gentlemen, the 
cause of this reproach is not due to us: it is due 
to the unfortunate mistake of our being summoned 
too soon. In the absence of more weighty busi- 
ness, all kinds of legislative improvisations have 
turned up, such as that proposal about diets and 
such-like, among whose admirers I cannot count 
myself. But now, gentlemen, we have really a 
great subject before us. I beg you that we show 
ourselves worthy of the occasion. We wish to 
emphasize the rights of the two powers which 
represent the unity of our nation, the rights of the 
Imperial Power and of Parliament, and we do not 
wish, when we have made sure of that, to dispute 
further about details which we might wish other- 
wise. For we have a feeling of assurance that 
the work of Germanization in Alsace will and 
must succeed. Recently I have been reading the 
secret documents regarding the organization of the 
Rhine provinces in the years 181 5 and 18 16. At 



Alsace an Imperial Province 199 

that time all the officials spoke in a tone of dis- 
couragement; they said that inhabitants of these 
provinces were a hybrid people, quite estranged 
from German nationality, and that many decades 
must pass before one could cease issuing orders 
in both languages. What German, gentlemen, can 
read these fears expressed in 18 15 without feeling 
his heart swell proudly and hopefully? It is true 
that to-day we nowhere possess in Germany a 
government even faintly comparable in strength 
to the old Prussian Government of that time. 
That has become unavoidably a darker side of 
constitutional life for Germany. But, on the 
other hand, to-day we are a nation who issue from 
an unequal struggle, not weary to death, but in a 
well-assured state of prosperity, abounding with 
vigour and strength. To-day we are a nation 
which does not wait anxiously for a king to fulfil 
his word, but which already possesses and uses 
parliamentary rights. Finally, we are a nation 
which has raised itself, not by foreign help, but by 
its own strength. 

These, gentlemen, are hopeful signs. I tell you 
that the instinct of nature and the call of the blood 
will speak in Alsace, the call of the blood which 
has already brought back so many lost sons of our 
great Fatherland to our Empire. I tell you the 
day will come when, in the most distant villages of 
the Vosges, the German peasant will say, "It is a 
happiness and an honour to be a citizen of the 
German Empire." 



IN MEMORY OF THE GREAT WAR 

(A Speech delivered at the Festival of the Commemora- 
tion of the War at the Frederick William 
University at Berlin on July iq, i8g$) 

Dear Colleagues and Fellow-Soldiers, 

To-day's festival recalls to us of the older genera- 
tion the golden days of our life — the days when 
the grace of God after battle and tribulation and 
mourning gloriously fulfilled beyond all our 
expectations all the longings of our youth. And 
yet, as I begin to speak, I feel keenly how pro- 
foundly the world has changed in this quarter of a 
century. It is not given to every period to do 
great deeds nor to understand them rightly. 
After the great crises of history there generally 
follows a generation which hears the iron voice of 
war, the great moulder of nations, still vibrating 
in its own heart, and rejoices with youthful 
enthusiasm over what has been gained. But 
without the constant work of self-recollection and 
self-testing, progress is impossible. New parties 
spring up imbued with new ideas ; they ask doubt- 
fully or scornfully whether the goal attained was 
worth the sacrifice made. The field-marshals of 

200 



In Memory of the Great War 201 

the study calculate arrangements which could cer- 
tainly have been better made on the patient 
paper. 

Industrious critics diligently spy out all the 
sordid and revolting details which adhere to every 
great human exploit, as the fungus to the oak-tree, 
and the preponderance of censure easily overwhelms 
joy and gratitude. A long period must generally 
elapse before a nation resolves to view the great- 
ness of its past again on a great scale. The deep 
significance of the War of Liberation was not 
revealed to the majority of Germans till half a 
century afterwards through the works of Hausser, 
Droysen, Bernhardi, and Sybel. Let us to-day 
turn our eyes away from everything that is trivial 
and regard only the moral forces which operated 
in the most fortunate of all wars. 

When Field-Marshal Moltke once visited his 
regiment, the Kolberg Grenadiers, he pointed to 
the portrait of Gneisenau — who had once formed 
this brilliant corps behind the ramparts of the 
unconquered Pomeranian fortress from the scat- 
tered remnants of the old army — and said, ''Be- 
tween us and him there is a great difference. 
We have had to record only victories. He has 
led the army to victory after a defeat. This 
severest test we have not yet undergone." Who 
can hear this utterance without admiring the pro- 
found modesty and at the same time the lofty 
ambition of the Field-Marshal. But we cannot 
merely echo the noble words ; we rather thank the 



202 In Memory of the Great War 

hero that he has himself confuted them by his 
deeds. So, exactly so, unerring as the hammer 
of Thor, had the German sword to hew down 
opposition, so, contrary to all experience, the 
changeable fortune of war had to become abiding, 
and garland after garland of victory had to adorn 
our banners if this most deeply-slandered and 
deeply-scorned of all nations was to win its due 
place in the community of States. We had been 
for centuries hampered and impeded in the simple 
task of national policy by the world-wide power 
of our Holy Roman Empire, just as the Italians 
were through their Papacy ; in our Confederation of 
States we were obliged to let many foreign Powers 
co-operate, and saw ourselves at the same time 
linked on to a half-German Power, a disguised 
foreign one whose insincerity a great part of the 
nation, misled by old, fond recollections, would 
never recognize. The fame of invincibility which 
once no one had dared to deny the armies of 
Frederick, had not been restored by all the glori- 
ous contests of the War of Liberation ; for foreigners 
always said sneeringly, "When the Prussians 
stood alone at Jena, they were beaten; only when 
allied with other Powers were they again vic- 
torious.' ' And at the same time there grew and grew 
in the nation the consciousness of an immeasurable 
strength, a living indestructible union of both 
intellectual and poHtical Hfe. A nation in a posi- 
tion of such unexampled difificulty, so strong in its 
justifiable self-esteem, and so weak through its 



In Memory of the Great War 203 

wretched federal constitution, must necessarily fall 
into confused and aimless party struggles, and 
pass through all the infant ailments of political 
life. Among the milHons abroad there was only 
one, our faithful friend Thomas Carlyle, who, 
in spite of the confusion of our party divisions, 
recognized the nobility of the soul of the German 
nation. All others were unanimous in the belief 
that we would come to nothing, and that this cen- 
tral part of the Continent, on whose weakness the 
old society of States had so long rested, would never 
become strong. In the eyes of foreigners we were 
only the comic-looking, jovial members of singing 
and shooting clubs, and the German word '' Vater- 
land" was, in England, simply a term of contempt. 
Then, when Prussia had again entered the old 
victorious paths of the Great Elector, and the 
Great King freed our Northern Marches, and 
shattered the foreign rule of the House of Austria 
by the cannon of Koniggratz, Europe was still far 
from recognizing the new order of things in Ger- 
many. We had in early times aimed at the world- 
rule of the Roman Empire, and had been then, by 
the cruel justice of history, condemned to an un- 
happy cosmopolitanism, so that our territory pro- 
vided the arena for the armies and the diplomatic 
intrigues of all nations. Was this state of things to 
continue? 

What we needed was a complete, incontestable 
victory, won solely by German strength, which 
would compel our neighbours to acknowledge at 



204 In Memory of the Great War 

last respectfully that we, as a nation, had attained 
our majority. This was clearly understood by the 
Emperor William, who so often re-echoed his 
people's words, when he said in his address from 
the throne, *'If Germany silently endured vio- 
lations of her rights and of her honour in past 
centuries, that was only because she did not realize 
in her dismembered condition how strong she 
was. " For a long time past we were no longer the 
poor, ill-treated nation of 1813, which had seen its 
colours disgraced, its lands laid desolate, prayed in 
holy wrath, ''Save us from the yoke of slavery!" 
and then, quietly prepared for the worst, waged the 
unequal strife. On the contrary, at the King's 
summons, a free, strong, proud nation arose in 
radiant exultation ; she knew her power, and from 
amid the confused tumult of public meetings and 
the din of the streets, of the newspapers and the 
pamphlets, one cry overpowered all other sounds, 
''We must, we will conquer." Poets have com- 
pared the grey-haired ruler as he rode majesti- 
cally before his knights to the kings of armies 
in German antiquity. King William was more; 
he was a hero of our time, the dominating mon- 
archic leader of an immense democratic mass-move- 
ment, which shook the nation from top to bottom, 
and, sure of its goal, stormily swept on, regard- 
less of the caution of hesitating Courts. It was 
a matter of course that the ancient and faithful 
nobility of Prussia should joyfully take up arms. 
Here in each peasant's farmhouse the talk was 



In Memory of the Great War 205 

stiU of ''the old Fritz" and "the old Blucher/' 
Here even in the French churches hung tablets with 
the iron cross and the inscription, '' Morts pour le 
rot et la patrie/' and the long lists of French names 
below showed how deeply a noble State may imbue 
noble foreigners with its spirit. But even in the 
small States, which had so long foregone the joy 
of victory, and now for the first learnt what a 
nation in arms means, there awoke everywhere a 
like zeal and a like confidence. Then a favourable 
turn of fortune brought it about that at the very 
beginning of the war the old scores of German 
internecine strife were wiped out, and wrongs 
committed in old quarrels were adjusted. The 
Bavarians, who had already three times owed the 
deliverance of their State to the friendship of 
Prussia, but through the misleading influences of 
the Court had become quite estranged from their 
old natural allies, now, led by Prussia's Crown 
Prince, helped to win the battles of Weissenburg 
and Worth. " Our Fritz, " with his kindly radiant 
smile, soon became the favourite of them all; 
he knit together the hearts of the South and 
North, and it was not long before the Bavarian 
reckoned the Prussian as his most faithful brother. 
Once, Maurice of Saxony had betrayed the bulwark 
of Lorraine to the French. Now Saxon regiments, 
nobly atoning for the sins of their fathers at St. 
Privat, carried out the final operations in the 
battles round Metz; and their Crown Prince 
Albert, who four years before at Koniggratz had 



2o6 In Memory of the Great War 

chivalrously covered the retreat of the defeated 
army, now proved himself to be one of the best of 
the leaders of the Prussian- German Army. The 
envy and jealousy of the German races was absorbed 
in the passionate rivalry of good comrades and 
blood-relations. Now there was nothing to remind 
anyone of the anxious way in which the Prussian 
Guards had been spared risks which had caused 
so much discontent in 1 8 14. The Guards bled and 
fought with much more devotion than many other 
corps, and if anyone complained it was only because 
he found that his regiment did not come often 
enough under fire. 

With such an army everything may be dared; 
every general aimed at the proud privilege of the 
initiative, which King Frederick had reserved 
for his Prussians. Spontaneously, and without a 
plan, and yet necessitated by the character of our 
army, the terrible battle raged round the heights of 
Spichem, because each commandant of a corps 
without ado went in the direction of the cannon- 
firing. One day, sooner than they were com- 
manded, the Brandenburgers ascended the left 
bank of the Moselle, and through the whole 
summer-day, quite unsupported at first, blocked at 
Mars la Tour the retreat which would have saved 
the whole of the enemy's army in the most heroic 
battle of the whole war. Thus two days after- 
wards that daring, tremendous battle with a 
reversed front was possible, which would have 
hurled our forces, if they had not been victorious, 



In Memory of the Great War 207 

into the midst of the enemy's country. As soon as 
one army was shut up in Metz, began, as the 
musketeers said, the great "battue" against 
the other. At Sedan, the descendants surpassed 
the deeds of the brave Landsknechts at the battle 
of Pavia, which their ancestors had celebrated; 
the French Emperor and his last army laid down 
their arms. Hitherto our troops had fought a 
well-trained army with crushing attacks as befitted 
the proud Prussian tradition. This army con- 
sisted for a large part of old professional soldiers 
who were accustomed to victory, but was inferior 
in numbers to its opponents. Now they had 
suddenly to undertake an entirely different and 
more troublesome task, less suited to the Prussian 
character. There commenced what was hitherto 
unexampled in all history, the siege of a metro- 
polis defended with fanatical courage. While the 
Germans beat back the continual sallies of the 
Parisian army recruited from the people, which was 
far superior to their own in numbers, there pressed 
from all sides to the relief of the capital new 
armies in countless masses, the choicest of the 
French youth, remnants of the old army and 
undisciplined mobs in wild confusion. 

Against these the besiegers had to conduct great 
sallying skirmishes and make bold attacks as far 
as the canal and the Loire. We Germans can 
surely not give Gambetta the name of "the 
raging fool," as many of his countrymen did in 
the heat of party strife. To attempt the impossible 



2o8 In Memory of the Great War 

in order to save one's fatherland is always a great 
thing to do. Moreover, the dictator's plans were 
not absolutely impossible; with his revolutionary 
impetuosity, he created new armies as if by a word, 
and fanned the flame of his nation's ardent patriot- 
ism into the fury of a race-war. The copious 
economic resources of Southern France, which had 
been accumulated through long years of industry 
and were as yet untouched by the war, seemed 
inexhaustible ; but moral resources are not so, either 
in the case of nations or individuals. From the 
beginning the French armies lacked the fidelity, 
the confidence, the consciousness of right which 
alone gives defeated troops a stand-by. And now, 
when all their fiery courage, all the momentum of 
their heavy masses, all the superiority of their 
infantry's firearms, could not in twenty battles 
turn the fortune of war, and as the Germans, 
veiled by the screen of their wide-sweeping cavalry 
squadrons, kept on pressing forward, contrary 
to all expectations, then even brave hearts were 
seized by the Prussian nightmare {le cauchemar 
prussien) . 

France had already lost the leading position in 
Europe since the overthrow of the first Empire, and 
then apparently recovered it through the diplo- 
matic skill of the third Napoleon. As soon as 
Prussia's victories in Bohemia threatened to re- 
store a just balance of power, there took posses- 
sion of those noisy Parisian circles, which had 
always dominated the wavering provinces, a 



In Memory of the Great War 209 

fantastic intoxication of national pride. There 
reappeared the old delusion that France's great- 
ness depended on the weakness of her neighbours. 
The public opinion of the agitators compelled the 
sick Emperor to declare war against his will; it 
arrogantly controlled and disturbed every move- 
ment of the enemy; it compelled the fatal march 
to Sedan. After the first defeats, the imperial 
throne, whose only support was good fortune, 
fell, and the party-rule of the new revolutionary 
government could neither exercise justice, nor com- 
mand the general respect. The fact that a supe- 
rior commands and a subordinate obeys was almost 
forgotten in the widespread and unnatural mis- 
trust which prevailed. Every misfortune was 
regarded as a piece of treachery, even when the 
war had seasoned men, and the army of the Loire 
had found a commander in Chanzy. Finally, 
after the surrender of Paris, the conquered people, 
under the eyes of the conqueror, tore each other to 
pieces in a terrible civil war. 

Seldom has it been so clearly demonstrated that 
it is the will which is the deciding factor in national 
struggles for existence, and in unity of will we were 
the stronger. France, which had so often fomented 
and misused our domestic quarrels, all at once 
found herself opposed by the vital union of the 
Germans ; for a righteous war releases all the natu- 
ral forces of character, and, side by side with 
hatred, the power of affection. Inviolable con- 
fidence bound the soldiers to their officers, and all 
14 



210 In Memory of the Great War 

of them to those in supreme command. The 
people of Suabia, Baden, and Bavaria, who had 
hitherto known us only as enemies, and were now 
for the first time joined to us by the loose tie of 
treaties based on international law, said quite as 
confidently as the Prussians, "The King and 
Moltke will manage it all right!" What a safe- 
guard and stay this absolute confidence was for 
the mass of the rank-and-file, when, after the 
victorious exultation of the summer, they had 
now in winter to make acquaintance with the 
whole terrible prosaic side of war — hunger, frost, 
exhaustion, necessary mercilessness towards the 
enemy, and, being aroused from a short sleep in 
the snow-filled furrows by the sound of drums 
and fifes, to fresh fights and endless marches the 
purport and object of which they did not under- 
stand. Many did not learn the value of the 
victories they had won till later, as though by hear- 
say. Thus, for example, the brave 56th drove 
the Gardes Mobiles of Brittany out of the farm La 
Tuilerie without suspecting that they had given 
a decisive turn to the three days' battle of Le 
Mans. "Good will, persistence, and discipline 
overcome all difficulties" — such is Moltke's simple 
verdict. This good will, however, was possible only 
in a nation of religious-minded soldiers. In simple 
humility, without much talking and praying, men 
bowed before the Inscrutable, who reaps the harvest 
of death on the battle-field. Often did an army 
chaplain, when he administered the last consola- 



In Memory of the Great War 211 

tions to the dying, hear from them words of deep 
and modest piety. 

Those who remained at home also became 
more generous, broader-minded, and affectionate; 
the seriousness of the crisis Hf ted them above the 
selfishness of every-day life. Party strife dis- 
appeared, isolated, unpatriotic fools were quickly 
reduced to silence, and the longer the struggle 
lasted the more firmly did the whole nation unite 
in the resolve that this war should restore to us the 
German Empire and our old lost w^estern provinces. 
One hundred and thirty thousand Germans fell a 
sacrifice to war's insatiable demands, but the lines 
of the old Landwehr's men which followed them 
appeared endless, till more than a million of our 
soldiers gradually crossed the French frontier. 
The war demanded all. When the reports of 
deaths arrived from the West, the fathers and 
brothers of those who had fallen said, "Much 
mourning, much honour," and even the mothers, 
wives, and sisters had in their heavy sorrow the 
consolation that their little house owned a leaf 
in the growing garland of German glory. 

But ideas alone kindle no enduring fire in the 
hearts of a nation; they need men. And certainly 
it was fortunate that the nation could look up 
unitedly to the grey-headed ruler, whose vener- 
able figure will always appear greater to coming 
generations the more closely it is made the subject 
of historical investigation. "His Majesty sees 
everything!" the sergeant-majors used to thunder 



212 In Memory of the Great War 

at their careless men, and they said the truth. 
When destiny raised him at an advanced age to the 
throne he had never sought, he soon perceived that 
Providence had determined him and his army to be 
an instrument for its dispensations. "If I did 
not beHeve that," he said calmly, ''how could I 
otherwise have been able to bear the burden of 
this war?" As a youth, he had admired the 
nation under arms, when under the pressure of 
necessity it had collected to carry out Scham- 
horst's plans though only half -drilled ; as a man, 
he had constantly considered with Schamhorst's 
successor. Boy en, how these unripe ideas might 
take a vital shape; finally as king, amid severe 
parliamentary struggles, he had carried through 
the three-years' service law which strengthened the 
troops of the line, and secured us an army which 
was at once popular and fully trained. He knew 
every little wheel- work of the gigantic machine; 
now he watched with satisfaction how it worked. 
Alone, without a council of war, he formed his 
resolves according to Moltke's reports. Earlier 
and more clearly than all those around him, he 
perceived that the battle of Sedan had indeed 
decided, but was far from ending the war. He 
knew the fervent patriotic pride of the French; he 
possessed in a special degree the rich experience 
of old age preserved by a powerful memory; he 
remembered how fifty-six years previously the 
armed throngs of the peasantry of Champagne 
had, as it were, started up out of the ground under 



In Memory of the Great War 213 

the eyes of the Prussians. Sooner and more clearly 
than all others, he perceived the danger which 
threatened from the Loire, and ordered the army 
in the South to be strengthened. Thus, till the end 
he remained the Commander-in-Chief, and when he 
left French territory, even after such victories, he 
seriously thought of the perpetual vicissitudes of 
mortal things, and warned the army of what was 
now united Germany that it could maintain its 
position only by perpetual striving after improve- 
ment. 

It is the characteristic charm of German history 
that we have never known a Napoleon suppressing 
all the personalities around him. At all great 
epochs there have stood near our principal heroes 
free men of firm character and assured self-con- 
fidence. King William also, a bom ruler, under- 
stood how to allow able men, each superior to 
himself in his own department, to have a free hand, 
each in the right place. Nothing is more admir- 
able than the true friendship which united the 
Commander-in-Chief to the strategist, the intel- 
lectual leader of the army, the wonderful man on 
whom prodigal Nature bestowed not only the 
sure eye and genial energy of a great commander, 
but the keenness of an intelligence which compre- 
hended almost the whole range of human know- 
ledge and the artistic sense of a classical author. 
And by the side of Moltke stood Roon, the stem 
and bitterly hated; hard and immovable in his 
principles hke a devout dragoon of Oliver Crom- 



214 In Memory of the Great War 

weirs, he had carried out the reconstitution of the 
army according to the instructions of his master; 
now his converted opponents called him "Ger- 
many's new armourer." Then came the army- 
leaders. After the Crown Prince, Goeben, the 
serious and taciturn, of whom his men said that he 
could not speak, but also that he could make no 
mistake; they did not know that he could write 
in a style like that of Csesar's Commentaries. 
Then Con stan tine Alvensleben, a genuine son of 
the Brandenburg warriors, cheerful and good- 
natured, but terrible in battle, impetuous and 
unweariable, until at last his troops' shout of 
victory, "Hurrah! Brandenburg!" rang out at Le 
Mans. Then the spirited, fiery Franke von der 
Tann, who now helped to complete what he had 
once attempted in the ardent fervour of youth, as 
leader of the Schleswig-Holstein voluntary corps; 
and so on, a large company of brave and thought- 
ful men whom our people in the course of years 
will regard with ever-deepening affection as they 
do the heroes of the War of Liberation. Just as 
the King himself was so simple and assured in his 
bearing that the flatterers of the Courts never 
dared to make any attempts on him, so his gener- 
als, with a very few exceptions, displayed the 
modest demeanour which Germans like. Let 
anyone go through the forest to the Httle hunting- 
lodge of Dreilinden. There in rural retirement 
lived the commander to whom the announcement 
was made, Monseigneur, fai Vordre de vous rendre 



In Memory of the Great War 215 

la garde imperiale. This was Prince Friedrich 
Karl, who brought about the greatest capitulation 
in the worid's history. 

At last came the time of harvest. Paris sur- 
rendered, and the last desperate attempt of the 
French against Southern Alsace came to a pitiable 
end. Four great armies were taken prisoners or 
disarmed, and all the German races had an equal 
and glorious share in the enormous success. In 
these last weeks of the war there stepped into 
the foreground of German history the strong 
man of whom the troops had so often spoken by 
their bivouac-fires. Ever since historical times 
began the masses of people have always rated 
character and energy above intellect and culture; 
the greatest and most boundless popularity was 
always only bestowed on the heroes of religion and 
of the sword. The one statesman who seems to be 
an exception only confirms the rule. In the popu- 
lar mind Bismarck was never anything but the 
gigantic warrior with the bronze helmet and the 
yellow collar of the cuirassiers of Mars la Tour, as 
the painters depicted him riding down the avenue 
of poplars at Sedan. It was he who had once 
spoken the salutary word, "Get rid of Austria!" 
It was he who by treaties with the South German 
States had in his far-sighted way prepared for the 
inevitable war. And when twenty-five years 
ago he read to the Reichstag the French declara- 
tion of war, all felt as though he were the first to 
raise the cry, ''All Germany on into France!" 



2i6 In Memory of the Great War 

and it seemed to all as though he rode into the 
enemy's land like a herald in front of the German 
squadrons. Now when the war was over he 
summed up the net results of the great battles, 
and after troublesome negotiations settled the 
constitution of the new kingdom. This constitu- 
tion seemed quite new, and yet it evoked the old 
sacred unforgettable emotions of German loyalty 
to the Kaiser. It appeared complicated even to 
formlessness, and yet it was fundamentally simple 
because it admitted of unlimited development. 
In her relations to foreign countries Germany 
was henceforth one, and in spite of much doubt 
all discerning people hoped that the Empire, 
possessing an imperial head, would now attain 
to its full growth. 

This work of Bismarck's brought peace and 
reconciliation to nearly all the old factions which 
had hitherto struggled on our territory. They 
had all made mistakes, and almost all rediscovered 
in the constitution of the Empire some of their 
most deeply-cherished projects. Our princes 
especially had been in the wrong. In the course 
of an eventful history they had often been the 
protectors of German religious freedom and the 
rich many-sidedness of our civilization, but had 
been often misled by dynastic envy and pride, 
even to the point of committing treachery. At 
the middle of the century their pride was at its 
height, for what else was the object of the war of 
1866 except to break in pieces the State of the 



In Memory of the Great War 217 

great Frederick, and to degrade it to the wretched 
condition of the petty German princedoms? But 
the dethroning of the sovereigns of Hanover, Hesse, 
and Nassau was a tremendous warning to the 
princes. They recollected themselves and remem- 
bered the noble traditions of imperial sentiment 
in the old princely families ; and as soon as the war 
began they gathered round their royal leader. 
Therefore they could, according to the old privi- 
leges of the German princes, themselves elect their 
emperor, and secure for themselves their proper 
share in the new imperial power. There in France 
was the first foundation laid for that invisible 
council of German princes, which is something else 
than the Council of the Confederation, which is 
not mentioned in any article of the imperial con- 
stitution, and yet always works perceptibly for the 
good of the Fatherland. Never yet at a critical 
time has the honest help of the princes failed the 
Hohenzollem Kaisers. 

The Conservative parties in Prussia had 
courageously championed the reconstitution of the 
army, but had at first followed the German policy 
of the new Chancellor of the Confederation not 
without mistrust; but now they saw the martial 
glory of their King established, and soon recognized 
that the revolutionary idea of German unity really 
signified nothing else than the victory of the 
monarchic constitution over dynastic anarchy. 

A tardy reparation was made to the old Gotha 
Party, the much-ridiculed professors of Frankfort. 



21 8 In Memory of the Great War 

They had certainly made a mistake when they 
thought to constrain the imperial power by the 
authoritative decree of a parliament ; but now there 
fell to them the honour of being the first pioneers 
of the nation's thought. What their leader, 
Dahlmann, had said in the spring of 1848, was 
literally fulfilled : "When Germany's united council 
of princes leads before the Reichstag a Prince of 
their own choice as hereditary head of the Empire, 
then freedom and order will co-exist in harmony. " 
Even the Democrats, so far as they were not mere 
visionaries, were able to rejoice at a success. 
Their best representative, Ludwig Uhland, had 
been in the right when he prophesied, "No head 
will be crowned over Germany which is not richly 
anointed with democratic oil." Without the 
co-operation of the Parliaments of the North Ger- 
man Confederation and the Southern States the 
new imperial power could not have come into 
existence. 

The heaviest blow befell the partisans of Austria, 
the "Great Germans."^ So severe was it that 
even their party -name entirely disappeared. But 
those who were sincere among them had only 
fought against the German "rival-Emperor" 
because they feared a Prussian imperial power 
would be too weak to sustain the position of the 
nation as one of the Great Powers. And how was 
it now? It was never doubtful whether a man was 
a German or not. We bore the mark of our good 

* That is, partisans of the union of Germany and Austria. 



In Memory of the Great War 219 

and evil qualities as distinctly impressed upon our 
brows as formerly did the Greeks, our kindred in 
temperament and destiny. But it was always a 
matter of dispute for centuries where Germany 
exactly was ; its boundaries were constantly chang- 
ing or disappearing in the fog of "rights of the 
Empire." Now for the first time there existed 
a German State whose frontiers were clearly 
defined. It had lost the frontier territories of the 
South-east, which for a long time past had only 
been loosely connected with the Empire, but as a 
compensation had finally recovered by conquest 
those on the Rhine and the Moselle, which had 
been torn away from the Empire. It had also, 
through the State of the Hohenzollems, won 
wide territories in the East and North which had 
never or merely nominally belonged to the old 
Empire, i. e., Silesia, Posen, Prussia, the land of the 
old Teutonic orders, and Schleswig. It was more 
powerful than the old Empire had been for six 
centuries. Who could now speak of it sneeringly 
as ''Little Germany"? Out of the perpetual ebb 
and flow of races in Central Europe there had 
finally emerged two great Empires — one purely 
German with a mixture of religions, the other 
Catholic, and comprising a variety of races who 
yet could not dispense with the German language 
and culture. Such an outcome of the struggles of 
centuries could not fail to satisfy for a time even 
the imagination of the "Greater Germany" 
enthusiasts. The great majority of the nation 



220 In Memory of the Great War 

joined in jubilantly when, in the Palace of Ver- 
sailles, the acclamation of the princes and the army 
greeted the Emperor, who in his deep modesty 
accepted the new dignity only with hesitation. 

Not all the blossoms of those days of enthusiasm 
have ripened into fruit. We hoped then that the 
intelligible resentment of the conquered would in 
two decades at least have grown milder, and that 
a friendly and neighbourly relation between 
two peoples so closely united by common aims 
of civilization would again be possible. But our 
hopes were vain. Over the Vosges there came to 
us voices of hatred, unanswered indeed, but irre- 
concilable; serious and learned people even sug- 
gested to us to give up volimtarily the western 
frontier territories which had been recovered by 
the sacrifice of thousands of our men. This was an 
impudent insult, to which in the consciousness of 
our good right we could only reply with cold con- 
tempt. Unavoidably the influences of the war of 
1870 operate much longer in the formation of the 
community of European States than did those of 
the War of Liberation. The irreconcilable hatred 
of our neighbours confines our foreign policy to one 
spot, and cramps the development of our power 
overseas. We hoped also that the old crippling 
jealousy between Austria and Germany would 
disappear, that the two would stand independently 
side by side as free allies, and that then the Teu- 
tonic race on the Danube would flourish more 
vigorously. This also was an error. With total 



In Memory of the Great War 221 

lack of consideration, the sub-Germanic peoples 
of the Danube Empire verified the old rule of 
historical ingratitude towards the Germans who 
had brought them civilization. Forcibly the 
conviction was impressed upon us that at home, at 
any rate, where we are masters, we must defend 
every inch-breadth of German civilization against 
foreign Powers. Moreover, it was natural that 
after our victory a truce should be proclaimed 
between the German parties, but our party 
struggles assumed rougher and coarser shapes 
from year to year. 

In the natural course of things, after the victory, 
a truce was proclaimed between the German 
political parties. But our party strifes have 
become from year to year rougher and coarser. 
They concern themselves less with political ideas 
than with economic interests; they stir up the 
flame of hatred between class and class, and 
threaten the peace of society. 

This coarsening of politics has its deepest source 
in a serious alteration which has taken place in 
our whole national life. Much that we considered 
characteristic of a decaying old world is the out- 
come of every over-cultivated city-civilization, 
and is being repeated to-day before our eyes. A 
democratized society does not care, as enthusi- 
asts suppose, for the aristocracy of talent, but 
for the power of gold or of the mob, or both to- 
gether. In the new generation there is disappear- 
ing terribly fast, what Goethe called the final aim 



222 In Memory of the Great War 

of all moral education — reverence: reverence for 
God; reverence for the barriers which nature has 
placed between the two sexes, and the limits 
which the structure of human society has imposed 
upon desire; reverence for the Fatherland which, as 
an ideal, is said to be yielding its place to the 
dream of a sensual and cosmopolitan plutocracy. 

The wider culture spreads the more shallow it 
becomes; the thoughtfulness of the ancient world 
is despised ; only that which serves the aims of the 
immediate future seems still important. Where 
everyone gives his opinion about everything, 
according to the newspaper and the encyclopaedia, 
there original mental power becomes rare, and with 
it the fine courage of ignorance, which marks an 
independent mind. Science, which, once descend- 
ing too deep, sought to fathom the inscrutable, 
loses itself in expansion, and only isolated pines of 
original thought tower above the low undergrowth 
of collections of memoranda. The satiated taste, 
which no longer understands the true, goes after 
realism, and prizes the wax figure more than 
the work of art. In the tedium of an empty 
existence the affected naturalness of betting and 
athletic sports gains an undeserved importance, 
and when we see how immoderately the heroes of 
the circus and the performers of the playground 
are over-prized, we are unpleasantly reminded of 
the enormous costly mosaic picture of the twenty- 
eight prize-fighters in the Baths of Caracalla. 

These are all serious signs of the time. But 



In Memory of the Great War 223 

no one stands so high that he can only accuse his 
people. We Germans, especially, have often 
sinned against ourselves through extravagant love 
of fault-finding. And no one can say that he 
really knows his own people. In the spring of 
1870 even the most sanguine did not suppose that 
our young men would strike as they did. So we, 
also, will hope that to-day, deep in the hearts of 
our people, there are at work rejuvenating powers 
which we know not of. And how much that does 
not pass away has, in spite of all, remained to us 
from the great war. The Empire stands upright, 
stronger than we ever expected ; every German dis- 
cerns its mighty influence in the ordinary occur- 
rences of every day, in the current exchange of the 
market-place. None of us could live without the 
Empire, and how strongly the thought of it glows 
in our hearts is shown by the grateful affection 
which seeks to console the first Imperial Chancellor 
for the bitter experiences of his old age. In my 
youth it was often said, *'If the Germans become 
German, they will found the kingdom on earth 
which will bring peace to the world." We are 
not so inoffensive any longer. For a long time 
past we have known that the sword must maintain 
what the sword won, and to the end of history, 
the virile saying will hold good, gta gta ^la'C^ziai, 
"Force is overcome by force." And yet there is 
a deep significance in that old verse about the 
Germans. Not only was the war for Prussia's 
existence — the Seven Years' War, — the first Euro- 



224 In Memory of the Great War 

pean war, not only did our State combine both the 
old State-systems of the East and the West into a 
European community of States, but being at last 
strengthened as a central State, during a quarter 
of a century of dangerous diplomatic friction, it 
has offered peace to the Continent not by means of 
the panacea of the pacificists — disarming — but by 
the exact opposite — universal arming. Germany's 
example compelled armies to become nations, 
nations to become armies, and consequently war 
to be a dangerous experiment ; and since no French- 
man has yet asserted that France can recover her 
old booty by force of arms, we may perhaps hope 
for some more years of peace. Meanwhile, our 
western frontier territory coalesces slowly, but 
unceasingly, with the old Fatherland, and the time 
will come when German culture, which has changed 
its place of abode so often, will again recover 
complete predominance in its old home. Finally, 
after so many painful disappointments, we have 
lately succeeded in a work, as only a great and 
united people can succeed. It was, indeed, a well- 
omened day when the canal between the North 
Sea and the Baltic was opened, and the Ger- 
mans on the Suabian Sea sent their brotherly 
greeting to the distant coast. 

Such hours of happy success you must hold fast 
in memory, my dear comrades, when your heads 
grow dizzy with the frenzy of party-spirit. Our 
festival to-day has especial significance for you. 
It is the privilege and happiness of youth to look 



In Memory of the Great War 225 

up, to trust the future in good spirits, not to de- 
spise the deeds of their fathers, nor to become sub- 
merged in the controversies of the day. You have 
not, Hke we of the older generation, helped to con- 
quer your Fatherland for yourselves with weapons, 
or the surgeon's knife, or the weak pen; you 
have not, like we, seen dear friends of your youth 
perish in body and soul, because they despaired 
too soon of Germany. To you comes the simple 
summons, Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna. Yes, 
you have obtained it, without any merit on your 
part, this imited Fatherland, which for the good of 
mankind mounted ever higher, from Fehrbellin to 
Leuthen, from Belle- Alliance to Sedan. It can pro- 
vide scope for every virile force, and the best is 
hardly good enough for it. If the call of the 
war-lord should ever summon you under the ban- 
ners of the eagle, you will not wish to be weaker 
in courage and faithfulness, in the fear of God 
and devotion, than the old Berlin students, whose 
honoured names we preserve in marble in our 
University hall. Whether Germany demands from 
you the toils of peace, or the deeds of war, 
cherish ever the vow which once the poet, looking 
down on the corpse-strewn fields around Metz, 
made in all our names : 

Think not that the blood you shed, 
Flowed in vain, O honoured dead, 
Or shall ever be forgot ! 

And now, gentlemen, as we do in all national 
15 



226 In Memory of the Great War 

festivals of our University, let us remember, 
reverentially, with loyal fidelity, the ruler who 
guards our Empire with his sceptre. God bless his 
Majesty, our Emperor and King. God grant him 
to exercise a wise, righteous, and firm rule, and 
grant us all strength to guard and to increase 
the precious inheritance of those glorious times. 
Come, good Germans, everywhere! Join with me 
in the cry, " Long live Emperor and Empire!" 



LUTHER AND THE GERMAN NATION 

(A Lecture given at Darmstadt on November 7, 
1883) 

Ladies and Gentlemen, 

There are many among you who stood, not 
many weeks ago, on the heights of the Niederwald, 
when our venerable Emperor presided at the unveil- 
ing of the statue representing Germania girt with 
her sword; and you there had the privilege of 
uniting with your compatriots from far and near 
in a feeling of joy and thankfulness. For centuries 
we Germans have been denied the luxury of join- 
ing together in that happy and unenvious contem- 
plation of our past which is the true life-blood of a 
healthy people. The very victories which brought 
about the unity of our Empire were the outcome 
of the first great united act performed by the whole 
nation since immemorial times. Glorious indeed 
is the history of our nation, which has so often 
given to this part of our globe the foremost figure 
of the century, and has, in warfare, so often spoken 
words of awakening or of reconciliation. Nearly 
all our great men were, however, so inextricably 
involved in the whirl of bewildering contrasts 

227 



228 Luther and the German Nation 

which disorganized our inner life that even to this 
day they remain an enigma to great masses of the 
people, and are looked upon merely as the pioneers 
of a family, a party, or a creed — ^not simply as 
German heroes. 

It was during the eighteenth century that the 
last and greatest representative of the old-fash- 
ioned unlimited monarchy held sway among us, 
and now that we are able to judge of the extent of 
his labours, the more enlightened among us have 
begun to feel that he was fighting for Germany 
when he waged war against Austria and the Holy 
Roman Empire. But in spite of this King 
Frederick, like his ancestor the Great Elector, will 
ever remain the favourite of his Prussians, while 
to the general mass of the Southern Germans he 
will continue to be something of a stranger. A 
century earlier we secured the religious peace of 
Europe after a horrible war, but victory was pur- 
chased at a fearful price, i. e., the laying waste 
of our ancient culture ; and almost the only lumin- 
ous figure in all that sombre period, the hero 
Gustavus Adolphus, was a foreigner. Moreover, 
even his admirers must admit that his victorious 
career terminated — very favourably to us — just 
at the moment when his power began to be prejudi- 
cial to our country. 

The same limitations are to be observed even 
in the commemorative festival which our Pro- 
testant nation is thankfully celebrating this week. 
It is not, unhappily, a festival in which all Ger- 



Luther and the German Nation 229 

mans will take part. Millions of our compatriots 
are holding aloof in silence, or even in open dis- 
approval. They are neither able nor willing 
to imderstand that the Reformer of our Church 
was the pioneer of the whole German nation on the 
road to a freer civilization, and that in the State 
and in Society, in our homes and in our centres 
of learning, his spirit still breathes life into us. 
Everyone who takes it upon himself to speak of 
Luther must confess what is his own attitude 
towards the great moral problems of the present 
day. And the accusations of those who are un- 
able to comprehend his greatness are as passion- 
ate in tone to-day as if the Reformer still walked 
in our midst. 

Even during his life-time Martin Luther incurred 
the penalty which awaits all great men, and 
especially all great fighters: he was misunderstood. 
During the early years of his public activity — 
years so full of promise — ^he was greeted by the 
nation with a tempestuous joy such as has not been 
seen again in Germany imtil our own time. In the 
days when he first belled the cat, when, forced 
forward by a lively conscience and the driving 
power of untrammelled thought, he turned from 
the paths of ancient orthodoxy to those of open 
heresy; when he threw the Papal Bull into the 
fire and gave that ringing call to the "Christian 
nobility of the German nation," in which he 
invited his Germans to reform the Church and the 
State, root and branch; then it was that he stood 



230 Luther and the German Nation 

revealed before the Emperor and the Empire 
as the leader of the nation, a man as heroic in 
aspect as the patron saint of his people, the warrior 
Michael. Then it was that men sought to express 
their joy in the words of the folk-song : 

He showed himself at Worms, 
All ready for the fray; 
He silenced all his enemies, 
And none could overcome him. 

Then, also, it seemed as if the elemental forces 
at work in a nation stirred to its depths — the re- 
ligious zeal of pious minds, the scientific curiosity 
of the rising generation, the national hatred 
of a knightly nobility for the foreign prelates, 
the discontent of an oppressed peasantry — were 
about to unite in a mighty torrent impetuous 
enough to sweep all Roman organizations and 
influences out of our State and our Church. The 
royal dignity of Germany was, however, still in 
close bondage to the world-embracing policy of the 
Holy Roman Empire. It can hardly have been 
an accident that the crown was at that moment- 
ous period worn by a stranger who could not 
discern the beating of our heart, and whose only 
answer to the acclamations with which the Germans 
hailed the courageous frankness of their country- 
man was a disdainful smile and the words, "Such 
a man shall never make me a heretic. " 

As soon as it became evident that the Emperor 
had refused to listen to the voice of the nation, the 



Luther and the German Nation 231 

Reformer found ranged against him not only the 
political strength of the Spanish World-Empire, 
but also the immense moral force embodied in the 
firm loyalty of our nation to the Emperor. Class- 
hatred — that mortal sin which has played so large 
a part in our history — now again made its appear- 
ance. The nobility frittered away their hot- 
blooded energy in the carrying on of aimless and 
most unhappy feuds. The peasants interpreted 
the gospel doctrine of Hberty in a material sense, 
and plunged into a furious social war. Luther, 
however, believed that his holy treasure had been 
insulted, and poured all the vials of his wrath 
upon the fools who sought to settle the problem 
of the gospel with hammer and tongs. When 
this horrible rising had been horribly punished by 
a cruel nobility, the man who had been so lately 
glorified by his compatriots found himself cursed 
by the common people. In the meantime Eras- 
mus, the first scholar of the century, had separated 
himself from the Wittenberg party; Luther's 
teacher, the mystic Staupitz, and the clever hu- 
manists, Crotus Rubianus and Eobanus Hessus, 
recoiled from him in terror. Their defection 
made it clear that the new teaching would at 
first have but a partial influence over the most 
highly educated sections of the nation ; and as this 
new doctrine freed the strong obstinacy as well 
as the power of independent thought which char- 
acterize the German character, its adherents 
began to fritter away their strength in a highly 



232 Luther and the German Nation 

dangerous manner. Undisciplined fanaticism and 
quarrels about dogma broke their unity. 

Luther, thus harassed and forsaken on all sides, 
sought refuge among the German Princes. If his 
last years were rich in great results, they were even 
richer in painful disillusionments. He had begun 
hoping that he might give new energies to Church 
life in Christendom, or at least in his own nation. 
Now he was forced to content himself with the 
knowledge that small evangelical Churches had 
gradually come into being in the territories of 
the greater among the German temporal princes; 
and he who watches, even superficially, the dawn 
of day in history may consider it a merciful dis- 
pensation of Providence that the Reformer, whom 
over- work had quickly aged, should have died just 
before the dissensions and aimless weaknesses of 
the leaders in the Schmalkaldian War led to the 
subjection of German Protestants to a foreign 
rule. The glory of departed heroes is usually 
exaggerated in the popular imagination; Luther, 
on the contrary, appeared to his contemporaries a 
lesser man than he really was. In those weary 
decades of political inactivity and theological dis- 
putes which followed upon the golden period of the 
German Reformation, a little sect proceeded to 
recreate Luther after its own image, as if he also 
had been nothing but a zealous preacher of Bible 
truths and a respectable father of a family, and as 
if his aim had merely been to found a separate 
Church called by the name of a sinful mortal. It 



Luther and the German Nation 233 

is only the historical science of our own day which 
has succeeded in plucking up heart to comprehend 
Luther in his entirety, Luther the epitome of his 
century, in whose soul nearly all the new ideas of 
the time were mightily re-echoed. We are far 
enough removed from him in time to be able to 
gauge the indirect consequences of his destructive 
and constructive labours, to observe all the seeds 
of a new culture which he sowed in German 
soil with all the unconsciousness of genius, and to 
realize with thankfulness how faithfully he kept 
the promise thus made by him: " I was bom for my 
Germans, and them will I serve." 

The joy of life has from the beginning possessed 
the German soul; but side by side with this there 
has always existed a meditative seriousness 
which is painfully conscious of the transitory 
nature of all earthly things. Undaunted courage 
has always been accompanied in our national 
character by a deep longing for deliverance from 
the curse of sin. Of all the nations of Western 
Europe, the ancient Germans alone had some 
premonition, even in their heathen days, of the 
future disappearance of this sinful race and of a 
new world of purity and light which is to come. 
To such a people the glad tidings from Jerusalem 
were peculiarly acceptable, and the marvellous 
buildings of our old cathedrals sufficiently testify 
to the piety and the earnestness with which the 
Germans received the new faith. It should, 
nevertheless, be observed that the Christian 



234 Luther and the German Nation 

doctrine had assumed a form in Rome which, 
on its arrival in our midst, never entirely recom- 
mended itself to us. All ages, peoples, and coun- 
tries seemed to be united in the great community 
of saints which bound the Church militant here 
below to the Church expectant of the poor souls 
in Purgatory and the Church triumphant of the 
saints in Heaven. From the treasury of good 
works laid up by the saints the Church dealt forth 
remission of sins to the faithful, through the 
medium of a ruling priesthood, whose members 
were empowered by the spiritual gifts of ordina- 
tion to change bread and wine into the Body 
and Blood of the Saviour. Outside the Church 
was no salvation; she embraced and hallowed 
the life of every Christian from the cradle to the 
bier, from baptism to extreme unction. The con- 
ception was indeed a great and wonderful one. 
The wisdom and piety of many holy persons 
and a rare talent for ruling men had built up the 
wonderful structure throughout many centuries. 
Each stone stood firmly cemented to its fellow, 
and the inevitable and logical sequence of one 
dogma upon another gave the Christian no choice 
between submission and heresy. But the close 
logic of the Romans had never quite satisfied the 
German mind; the living conscience of our people 
could never find peace in means of grace supplied 
by the Church and in prescribed good works alone. 
As early as the fourteenth century the German 
territories rang with the Kyrie eleisons of the sect 



Luther and the German Nation 235 

of Flagellants, and ever louder and more despair- 
ing — almost as heartrending as in the earliest days 
of Christian history — grew the cry of the sinful 
creature pleading for reconciliation with its Creator. 

Further, the bellicose and practical mind of the 
Germans was bewildered by the teaching of the 
old Church. This beautiful world offered so 
many laurel wreaths of honour, and so many 
elevated pleasures to men of energy, and yet 
all these were to be of no account in comparison 
with the higher sanctity of dedicated men, of 
priests and monks who had renounced everything 
that binds men to one another by human ties, and 
who despised not only the infinite happiness, but 
also the sacred duties of married life. Walther 
von der Vogelweide, the greatest of our mediaeval 
poets, pondered sadly over this dark riddle, com- 
plaining that "One and the same heart can never, 
alas! receive God's grace in form of riches and in 
form of honour." 

And this priestly hierarchy, which kept itself 
so immeasurably above the obedient multitude, 
which so greatly scorned all worldly activities, had 
long been the prey of a shameless worldliness which 
caused secular persons to regard its members as a 
race of hypocrites. The clergy owned the wealth- 
iest third of Germany, always formed a majority 
and carried all motions in the Reichstag, and 
exerted a political influence which was looked upon 
by the Germans as a kind of foreign rule. This 
latter idea was due to the knowledge that the 



236 Luther and the German Nation 

Church was ruled by the Pope and his Italian 
prelates; and all the wealth of intellect, wit, and 
culture which hobnobbed together in the ante- 
rooms of the Vatican, all the masterpieces of the 
chisel and the brush which the sun of Papal favour 
brought into being, could not console our nation 
for the fact that the mistress of Christendom 
was the most profligate city of the earth. It was 
in vain that the Germans had sought, at the 
councils of the fifteenth century, to reform the 
abuses in the Church. When Luther appeared 
the nation was in a dangerous state of ferment, 
the prey of conflicting emotions. On the one hand 
were the pious persons, consumed by scruples, and 
taking painful stock of their sins and their good 
works, and contemplating the popular pictures 
of the Dance of Death with holy terror; on the 
other stood the sensuous lovers of life, full of 
energy and high spirits, rejoicing in crude jests 
and delighted to mock at the caricature of a 
world turned upside down. But to whichever class 
they belonged, all Germans united in hating the 
foreign yoke. 

The actual setting free of Germany was the 
direct outcome of an internal conflict waged in 
an honest German conscience. Luther drew from 
his very humility suflicient strength to endow him 
with the utmost boldness. In his youth a passion- 
ate anxiety respecting the salvation of himself 
and his brothers had driven him to leave father 
and mother, in order to storm heaven from his 



Luther and the German Nation 237 

cell by means of all the torments of monkish pen- 
ances. Nothing, however, could drown the cry of 
his soul, " My sin, my sin, my sin, " and at last the 
truth of the saying of the apostle about justi- 
fication by faith was revealed to him in all its light- 
giving splendour. He now began to realize what 
was meant by the iisTavota of Paul, by the con- 
version of the inner man. Humbly confessing 
the insufficiency of human merit, he resigned him- 
self in faith to the mercies of the living God, 
and he dared to live according to this his new 
creed. The entire divergence between Roman and 
German feeling stands revealed to us when we com- 
pare these interior battles of Luther's with the 
spiritual conflicts later experienced by Ignatius 
Loyola, the champion of the old Church after its 
revival. The Spaniard puts an end to his suffer- 
ings by resolving never again to touch the wound 
of his soul ; the German finds peace only when his 
mind is convinced of the truth of his beliefs and all 
doubts have been banished by the irrefutable testi- 
mony of personal experience. 

Quite unconscious of the incalculable effect 
which his action will have on others, Luther now 
sets out on his campaign against the ugly abuses 
prevalent in a worldly Church, and then God leads 
him on as if he were an old blind horse. Every 
decisive thought that enters his mind further con- 
vinces him that God does not desire compulsory 
service, and that no one can sit in judgment over 
the human conscience but God alone. Hardly 



238 Luther and the German Nation 

three years after the beginning of the quarrel 
about indulgences he breaks loose from the re- 
stricted morality of the Middle Ages in that mighty 
hymn of Gospel liberty, the book concerning the 
freedom of the Christian soul. He there proclaims 
that the Christian is subject to no one in matters 
of faith, and that for that very reason he is the 
servant of all, pledged in loving service to the 
least of his brethren. Good works can never 
make a man holy, but a good man must by his 
very nature perform good works. His conception 
of what moral life should be is at the same time 
broader and stricter than that of his predecessors. 
It has a direct affinity with the war waged by 
Jesus against the rigid legal conventionality of the 
Pharisees, and is based on the axiom that the centre 
of gravity in the moral world is the conscience of 
man. This discovery at once leads to a realiza- 
tion of the priesthood of the laity, and the idea of 
a free Church which is content to let the outward 
forms of church life be carried away with all 
things human on the stream of time. Such a con- 
ception makes it possible to contrast the words, 
"On this rock will I build My Church" — words 
most grossly misunderstood — with these other 
words of which the meaning has vital application, 
"Where two or three are gathered together in My 
name, there am I in the midst of them. " 

Luther's action certainly amounted to a revolu- 
tion, and as religious belief has its roots in the 
inmost recesses of the heart of the nation, its 



Luther and the German Nation 239 

effects on existing institutions were more far- 
reaching than any poHtical upheaval has been 
in modem history. It is certainly not a sign of 
evangelical courage when many well-meaning 
Protestants seek to deny or conceal this fact. So 
incredibly bold a course could only have been 
adopted by a man filled with all the native energy 
and unquenchable fire of German defiance. The 
whole of the old order in the moral world which had 
been held sacred during a thousand years, the long 
chain of venerable traditions which had held the 
life of Christendom together, were shattered at a 
blow. Indeed, we can even sympathize with the 
Alsatian Mumer, the opponent of the Reformer, 
who cried out at the sight of this colossal ruin : 

All books are lies, 

The saints have deceived us, 

Our teachers all are blind. 

The greatness of the historical heroes lies in the 
fact that they unite in themselves mental and 
moral powers which seem to the common herd in- 
compatible. Nothing could be more remarkable 
than the courage of this simple man, who de- 
scribed himself as a goose among swans, but yet 
dared to enter the lists against the mightiest of 
the political and moral powers of his time. No- 
thing, moreover, could exceed his native modera- 
tion. Never was he more bold than when he 
lovingly warned the Wittenberg iconoclasts not to 
let their "liberty be a cloak of offence." With 



240 Luther and the German Nation 

childlike confidence he builds upon the founda- 
tion of God's Word alone. And his belief did 
not deceive him, for when once the wild upheavals 
occasioned by the Peasants' War and by the risings 
of the Anabaptists had been mastered, the victory 
of the Reformation in Germany was gained by 
peaceful methods with the willing co-operation of 
the people. In spite of all the uglier aspects of this 
great movement, it was nevertheless character- 
ized by that simple honesty and energy which 
especially reveal themselves at moments of great 
stress in our German history. The Reformation 
presented our people with a form of Christian 
belief which satisfied their craving for truth, and 
was in harmony with the untamable independence 
of the German character, just as the Roman 
Church satisfies the logical aptitude and the 
craving for beauty of the Latin races, and the 
Orthodox Church satisfies the semi- Oriental sub- 
missiveness of the Greco-Slavonic world. Luther's 
word had infinite influence over a circle far wider 
than that composed of his co-religionists. He was 
justified when he cried out to the German bishops, 
" You have procured a condemnation of my gospel, 
but you have secretly accepted many of its 
tenets." We are right to look upon him as a 
benefactor of the old Church as well; for that 
Church also was forced by him to gather her moral 
strength together, and she did not remain inwardly 
untouched by the heartfelt and soulful accepta- 
tion of the faith which Luther gave back to 



Luther and the German Nation 241 

Christendom. A doctrine of indulgences as ma- 
terial as that preached by Tetzel would now be 
untenable on German soil, and it is certain that 
to-day the thoughtful German Catholic stands 
nearer to the German Protestant in his entire 
conception of life than he stands to his Spanish 
co-religionist. 

In all the mighty transformations of our spiritual 
life which have taken place since, the fundamental 
idea of the Reformation, the free surrender of the 
soul to God, has remained the immutable moral 
ideal of the German. In the sphere of worldly 
affairs it shows itself in the severe utterance of 
Kant, who declared that nothing in the world 
must be looked upon as good except a good inten- 
tion. The same note is heard in the gentle song 
of the angels who bear the soul of Faust to heaven : 
"We can set free all those who never cease to 
strive." We have to thank the Reformation for 
the vital and paternal relationship of the creeds 
on which German civilization rests to-day; for 
that broad tolerance which springs neither from 
fear nor from indifference, but from a realization 
that the world being as it is, the light of Divine 
revelation is visible to human eyes only when broken 
into many rays. No sixteenth century person — 
not Luther himself — could have understood what 
we to-day call tolerance; still this long suffering 
became possible only under the influence of Pro- 
testant belief, which strikes at the roots of the 
arrogant false belief in a Church which alone 
16 



242 Luther and the German Nation 

holds the keys of heaven. We have to thank the 
Reformation for enabHng the German to think 
both piously and independently, for permitting 
not one of our great thinkers, however bold his 
flight, from falling into the blasphemous mockery 
of a Voltaire, and for causing the mortal sin of 
hypocrisy to be almost unknown amongst us. 

Herein lies the greatness of Protestantism; it 
will not suffer a contradiction to exist between 
thinking and willing, between religion and moral 
life. It will not be gainsaid in its demand that 
what a man beHeves that he shall openly confess 
and openly follow. In Luther's day the Italians 
greatly excelled our nation in art and science. In 
the fourteenth century they were already able 
to point to Petrarch, the first modem man, a 
person who had elected to stand upon his own feet 
and to pull the bandage from his eyes. And at the 
time of the dispute in Germany on the subject of 
indulgences, Machiavelli was writing two books 
concerning the State in which he repudiated the 
traditional beliefs of the Middle Ages far more 
recklessly than Luther ever did. The Latins, 
however, lacked the strength to take their own 
ideas quite seriously ; they succeeded in dividing 
their conscience, so that they were able to obey 
a Church which they ridiculed. The Germans 
dared to shape their lives in accordance with truths 
which they had lately learnt to believe ; and since 
the historical world is a world of the will, and 
thought, not action, shapes the destinies of nations, 



Luther and the German Nation 243 

it may be said that the history of modem human- 
ity begins, not with Petrarch or the artists of the 
fifteenth century, but with Martin Luther. Europe 
was in no way slow to reahze this fact. Only a 
hundred and forty years after Luther's death the 
German historian, Cellarius, asserted that towards 
the close of the fifteenth century the Middle Ages 
were closed and relegated to the background as a 
period now passed away. The idea and the name 
of the Middle Ages have since become indigenous 
in most countries, and will so remain, although our 
present-day vanity seeks in vain to point to the 
French Revolution as the beginning of modem 
history. 

Like all true Germans, Luther always cherished 
a deep sense of historical piety, and he delighted to 
regard the great changes which he had brought 
about in the Church as being merely a restoration 
of the conditions which prevailed in Christendom 
during the earliest periods of its existence. He 
knew, however, that he had endowed the political 
life of nations with an entirely new idea. He used 
to say of the men of his youth that "No one either 
taught or learnt, and that therefore no one knew 
aught concerning temporal authority, whence 
it was, what was its office or its work, or how it 
might serve God. " The State had certainly never 
received its due since the difficult question as to the 
whereabouts of the boundary line between spiritual 
and temporal power had arisen to vex the mind of 
Christendom. The heathen world had been con- 



244 Luther and the German Nation 

fronted with no such problem. During the first few 
centuries of its career, the Church had had no deal- 
ings with the State, because the latter was heathen ; 
and when it obtained the upper hand in the Roman 
Empire there gradually grew up the political system 
of an ecclesiastical world-empire — a system which 
had a very close connection both with the organiza- 
tion and with the dogma of the Church. According 
to it, the whole life of Christendom appears as a 
firmly compacted whole. Statecraft and political 
economy, science and art, all human callings receive 
the moral law governing their existence from the 
hands of the Church. The Church is God's State, 
but the earthly State is the kingdom of the flesh, 
existing for no moral purpose, and only justified by 
God when it places its strong arm at the service 
of the judge of the world of States, namely, the 
Pope. No vigorous mediaeval State had com- 
pletely recognized these very arbitrary claims of 
the Papacy. The ecclesiastical doctrine of a 
world-empire had begun to lose its prestige among 
scholars in the days of Dante, of Marsilius of 
Padua, and of the courageous Ghibelline authors 
who crowded round the Emperor Ludwig the 
Bavarian. It could not be entirely overcome 
until the bull was taken by the horns, and the 
domination of the clergy brought to an end in 
the Church itself. 

Luther first smashed to atoms the dictum behind 
which the Romanists entrench themselves: he 
denied that "spiritual power is higher than tern- 



Luther and the German Nation 245 

poral power," and taught that the State is itself 
ordained of God, and that it is justified in fulfilling 
and indeed pledged to fulfil, the moral purposes of 
its existence independently of the Church. The 
State was thus declared to be of age ; and as it had 
really attained its majority, and as the temporal 
power everywhere received firm support from the 
growing self-realization of the nations, this political 
emancipation had almost a mightier and a more 
far-reaching influence than the reformation of the 
Church. All rulers, without exception, whether 
Catholic or Protestant, repudiated the poHtical 
suzerainty of the crowned priest. An obedience 
such as that previously demanded of the temporal 
powers by the Pope was no more thought of, and 
before the close of Luther's century, Bodinus origi- 
nated the idea of the sovereignty of the State with a 
real display of scientific acumen. The theory was 
an entirely new one, and, once discovered, it 
became, and still continues to be, the common 
property of all civilized men. In vain did the 
Jesuits continue to dream of the world-empire of 
the Church; the States of Europe, none the less, 
formed themselves by degrees into a new and 
free association, and built up for themselves a 
universal code of national law, which was more 
just than the former judgments of the Popes, and 
had its roots in the common interests and the 
sense of justice of the nations. Step by step 
the modem State forced back the Church on her 
spiritual territory. It deprived her of the admin- 



246 Luther and the German Nation 

istration of justice, of the management of educa- 
tion, and of the care of the poor, and proved by 
the results that it is more competent to fulfil these 
political duties than its predecessor had been. 
Nothing reveals the innate healthiness of the 
political ideas of the Reformation more completely 
than the undeniable fact that the political develop- 
ment of the Protestant States was throughout 
effected with less effort and in a more peaceful 
manner than that of the Catholic States. 

The emancipation of the State from the tyranny 
of ecclesiastical control nowhere brought with it so 
rich and abiding a blessing as in Germany, for 
nowhere had the old Church been more closely 
interwoven with the State than in the Holy Roman 
Empire and in the many ecclesiastical princedoms 
supported by the imperial power. No one can 
deny that the Reformation furthered the break-up 
of the old Empire which had been threatening for so 
long, and fanned, by means of religious hatred, the 
flame of a political antagonism already in existence. 
But he who can heal wounds is thereby entitled 
to give them. From the well of Protestantism 
alone could this sickly kingdom draw the waters 
of youth. It was only when our State again 
became true like its Church, when it rejected the 
claims of the Holy Roman Empire, now proved ill- 
founded, when it placed its episcopal lands under 
worldly jurisdiction, that it again became able to 
move with the times. 

Luther never drew these last conclusions him- 



Luther and the German Nation 247 

self. He quailed at the thought of civil war; 
"Germany," he said, ''would be devastated three 
times over before we could establish a new form of 
government. " He knew that he was not a states- 
man, and he had all the national respect for the 
majesty of the Empire and the aristocracy of 
Austria. He had to combat many doubts before 
he could make up his mind to sanction opposition 
to imperial encroachments which had after all 
been sanctioned under the old regime. The nature 
of things, and the common sense of history finally 
brought about conditions which were bound to 
arise sooner or later in the home of the Re- 
formation. The ecclesiastical States of Germany 
gradually collapsed without hope of redemption, 
until finally, at the beginning of our own century, 
the last mouldy ruins of the Roman theocracy were 
secularized and the Holy Roman Empire abolished. 
It was only at this point, when our State honestly 
CwSpoused the cause of its own secular existence, 
that the site was levelled for a new edifice. And 
even in this last salutary stage in our history the 
Reformer played his part by means of a deed of 
which he was unable to perceive the ultimate 
consequences. On Luther's advice Albert of 
Brandenburg, the Grand Master of the Teutonic 
Order, decided to discard the white mantle with the 
black cross, to repudiate the false chastity of the 
monks, and to found a true and knightly dominion 
which should seek to be acceptable to God and the 
world without the aid of tinsel and false names. 



248 Luther and the German Nation 

Thus it was that Prussia, a land belonging to the 
Order, a colony of Germany as a whole, was turned 
into a secular duchy and saved from the greed of 
its Polish neighbour. Luther wrote with gratitude : 
"Behold a miracle! With all sails spread, the 
Gospel speeds through Prussia." He did not 
dream what other greater miracles our nation 
should behold in his outlying Eastern province. 
It was from this district, which was snatched from 
the old Church and stood or fell with Protestant- 
ism, that the military greatness of our modern 
history emerged to reveal itself in world-famed 
battles, and it was also out of Prussia that grew up, 
in the fullness of time, the new State of Germany, 
which refuses to be either holy or Roman, but 
desires, in the words of the Reformer, to be a 
secular kingdom, a German kingdom, without 
tinsel and false appellations. 

It has been seen that the unity of the German 
State dates from the day when the last ecclesiasti- 
cal State disappeared from German soil. It is 
also to the battles of the Reformation that we 
owe that priceless moral link which sufficed to hold 
us together, almost unaided, during the days of our 
national dismemberment: I mean our new lan- 
guage. The feat of subjecting the Northern Ger- 
mans to the yoke of the High German language — 
a task which even the magic of our chivalrous 
poetry had failed to accomplish — was only 
achieved when the Wartburg had for the second 
time become dear to our people. You will remem- 



Luther and the German Nation 249 

ber that it was from this fair spot, beloved of the 
Minnesingers, that proceeded the first books of 
the German Bible; for in this German Bible we 
find the Sacred Scriptures most faithfully trans- 
lated by a rehgious genius of like mind with the 
authors; yet his work is so truly German, so 
entirely permeated with the breath of our German 
spirit, that it would be hard for us to-day to imagine 
God's Word in any other form. Like the Italians, 
we received our literary language at a definite 
moment of time and at the hands of a single man. 
The very nature of genius demands, however, that 
only that which is necessary and simply natural 
shall be aimed at. Dante made no deliberate 
innovations, but merely ennobled and gave fresh 
inspiration to the popular idiom of his native 
Tuscany. Luther in like manner merely sought 
to be understood by every one of his com- 
patriots, so that God might speak German to 
the German nation. It was for this reason that he 
used the Middle German which all understood, 
and which was already the official language used 
by the authorities in all localities where High and 
Low Germans were united under one ruler, in the 
State of the Teutonic Order, and in the chancellor- 
ies of the Liitzelburg Emperors and of the Saxon 
Electors. 

It will be seen, then, that all sections of the 
nation gave or received something in their com- 
mon work for the Reformation. Protestantism 
received firm political support from the North; 



250 Luther and the German Nation 

but it was Upper Germany which contributed the 
mighty language which was from thenceforth 
to hold moral sway over evangelical Germany. 
These districts of Southern and Middle Germany 
have from time immemorial been the warm cradle 
of our poetry, and also of our linguistic develop- 
ment. And this High German was the language of 
Luther's own home. Its accents had been dear to 
him from earliest childhood, and he had heard 
them from the lips of the people in the mines at 
Mansfeld, the quarry-men employed by his dear 
father. Goethe alone has rivalled him in his com- 
mand over language; but, notwithstanding this 
eloquence, he remains the most "popular" of all 
our writers. His works combine in themselves 
elements usually believed to be incompatible. 
They show deep thought, close compression of 
matter, all-compelling argument, and an immense 
prodigality of magnificent words, so that the 
reader seems to hear the heartfelt accents of the 
preacher himself. Their gift to the imaginative 
is immense, and the meditative are left with endless 
food for thought. This language of freedom and 
truth, born as it was in the midst of wars, cannot 
deny the tokens of its origin to this day. It is a 
language created to voice mighty wrath, to sport 
and jest, to storm the pinnacles of thought, to 
gently whisper the inmost secrets of the heart. 
But let a man once seek to drive or coerce our 
mother tongue to hide its meaning, to make treach- 
erous and biting salHes, or even to pander to an 



Luther and the German Nation 251 

uneducated craving for the charming and the 
piquant, and he will get but little from it; such a 
person will find himself obliged to go and beg at the 
table of strangers. 

More than a hundred years elapsed before this 
new German, which shed a glory over the hymns 
and sermons of the Evangelical Church, became 
the common property of our people. Learning 
then became popular and worldly in its turn, and 
our ancestors saw the fulfilment of the saying 
which Ulrich von Hutten had proclaimed aloud 
to the world in the very first days of the nation's 
rapturous hope: ''Formerly the priests alone were 
learned; now God has given skill to all to read 
and understand." About the middle of the six- 
teenth century a sad and paralyzing influence 
descended on the Lutheran branch of German 
Protestantism, for little beside the solemn strains 
of the evangelical hymns was left to remind men 
what the original spirit of the Reformation had 
been, and ambitious theologians, in the old and the 
new Church alike, sought to determine the direc- 
tion and limitations of study. It was only the 
heroic courage of the vigorous sister church in the 
Netherlands, and the struggle of the Calvinists 
there against Spain, that preserved a degenerate 
Lutherism from certain destruction. Not until we 
experienced the miseries of the Thirty Years' War 
did we realize the real trend of affairs. The 
Pietists of Halle roused once again in our people 
the vital spirit of the gospels, the spirit of brotherly 



252 Luther and the German Nation 

love, which sought to make the evangelical life a 
reality, and which the barren and unprofitable 
quarrels of the last few decades had obscured. 
Pufendorf drove the theologians out of the domain 
of political science; Thomasius was the first to dare 
to speak German from a German professorial 
chair. And on the soil thus prepared there at once 
grew up our new learning and our new poetry, free 
from all the harshness consequent on a religious 
bias, fundamentally worldly, far bolder in its con- 
ceptions than any theories ever sanctioned by 
Luther, but still perfectly Protestant. All the 
leaders of this new learning were Protestants. 
The new ideal of humanity could proceed only from 
the autonomy of the conscience won for us by 
Luther. The Bavarian Jesuits were horrified 
on hearing the "Lutheran German" of this new 
culture, but none the less it continued its peace- 
ful march of victory even through Catholic 
Germany, until it had at last drawn all things 
German into the fresh stream of its ideals. And 
we may recognize with pride to-day that even the 
champions of Rome from among our countrymen 
long ago learnt ''Lutheran German," and that 
they fight against us with swords forged on our 
own anvils. 

Honest worldly activity did not receive any 
moral justification until the Church's activities 
were entirely limited to spiritual matters. This 
period saw the solution of the riddle which had 
seemed insolvable to the mediaeval poet; riches 



Luther and the German Nation 253 

and honour were now found to be perfectly com- 
patible with the grace of God. Eternity itself 
now entered the sphere of the believer's material 
life, and he began to feel that he could and must do 
service by means of his handiwork. Even the 
soldiers received from Luther the comfortable 
assurance that they too would be in a state of 
salvation if they sought to perform their hard 
duties faithfully. But as soon as it was seen that 
a Church could exist without clergy, it became 
impossible for the clergy even in purely Catholic 
countries, to persist in claiming to be the highest 
order in the social scale. In Germany the middle 
strata of society, to which Luther had chiefly 
addressed himself, became ever more and more the 
elite of the nation. Moreover, the determining 
power which education and culture, and iinfor- 
tunately also doctrinarianism, wield in German 
life to this day had its origin in the achievements 
of the greatest of German professors. 

Protestantism is the product of a robust and 
virile century which cared little for women, and the 
sobriety of the outward forms of its worship do not 
always satisfy the pious longings of the female 
heart. Yet Luther raised the German women to a 
higher level than that occupied by them in the days 
when the merciful Mother of God was invoked. 
The woman's domain, the home, was brought into 
high honour by him before God and man. It was 
not without a hard struggle that he took courage 
to woo his Kate; the scales were finally turned 



254 Luther and the German Nation 

not only by a desire for domestic bliss, but also 
by a sense of a sacred duty to be performed. How 
often he cried out to monks and nuns, "Who 
commanded you to pledge yourselves to a life that 
is contrary to God and to His laws, and to swear 
that you are not men and women?** If he was 
justified in putting this question, if matrimon}^ was 
really a holy state, and better pleasing to God than 
the vow of the tonsured, it became incumbent upon 
him to testify to the truth of his teaching in his own 
person. He knew what a muddy tide of base and 
disgusting insinuations would roll up against him, 
whose spotless name had hitherto been as a shield 
to a great cause and had withstood all the darts 
of the slanderers. He took to himself this cross of 
his own free will, for the moral force of evangelical 
truth could not be demonstrated more victoriously 
or convincingly than in the marriage of an escaped 
monk and an escaped nun who thereby set 
an example to thousands of pious people. 

This marriage did, indeed, form an example. 
This family, laden with all the curses of Rome, 
lives in all our hearts to-day. We think of it on 
Christmas Eve, in front of the Christmas-tree, 
when the fresh voices of our children proclaim the 
joyful tidings, "From high heaven I am come.'* 
We see the old professor, the spiritual adviser of 
his dear Germans, dealing out help and comfort 
and instruction to all the doubting and the heavy 
laden who flock to him from far and near; we see 
him, strong in the possession of a free mind, ever on 



Luther and the German Nation 255 

the side of nature, of the heart, of equity, and of 
love. We hear his hearty laugh as he speaks 
strong words of encouragement to the timorous 
Melanchthon, or praises the greatness of his small 
Greek with the unenvious enthusiasm of a friend. 
We enjoy his golden mood when in the evening he 
passes the goblet round his hospitable table, where 
my lady Music, the most German of the arts, has 
her place among the many tipplers. 

No ill intent can harboured be 
Where men sing in good company. 

We mourn with him when he is overcome by the 
most human of griefs, and weeps at the bier of his 
little Lena. Such was the first evangelical parson- 
age. And how many tears have since been dried 
by our country pastors' wives, and how many good 
and clever men have since been brought up in the 
learned though not unnatural atmosphere of these 
peaceful homes ! 

All our actions are but piecework, and history 
records the name of no man who was not greater 
than his work. The most priceless legacy be- 
queathed by Luther to our people is, after all, the 
legacy of himself and of the life-giving might of his 
heaven-inspired mind. None among the other 
modern nations can boast of a man who was the 
mouthpiece of his countrymen in quite the same 
way, and who succeeded as fully in giving expres- 
sion to the innermost character of his nation. A 
stranger may inquire in bewilderment how it was 



256 Luther and the German Nation 

possible for such striking contrasts to show them- 
selves in the same human soul. Men wonder how 
it was possible to combine a capacity for towering 
anger with a pious and sincere belief, high wisdom 
with childlike simplicity, deep mysticism with 
heartfelt enjoyment of life, uncouthness and rough- 
ness with the tenderest goodness of heart; they 
marvel that the tremendous personage who ended 
a letter to his un-grace, Duke George of Saxony, 
with the words, "Martin Luther, by the grace of 
God evangelist at Wittenberg," could then kneel 
humbly in the dust before God. We Germans are 
not puzzled by these apparent contradictions; all 
we say is, " Here speaks our own blood. ' ' From the 
deep eyes of this uncouth son of a German farmer 
there flashed the ancient and heroic courage of 
the Germanic races — a courage which does not flee 
from the world, but rather seeks to dominate it 
by the strength of its moral purpose. And just 
because he gave utterance to ideas already living 
in the soul of his nation, this poor monk, who had 
but lately made his humble pilgrimage from the 
Augustinian monastery, on Monte Pincio, to the 
halls of St. Peter, was able to grow and develop 
very rapidly, until he had become as dangerous 
to the new Roman universal empire as the assailing 
German hordes were to the empire of the Caesars. 
One generation after Luther, four fifths of our 
people belonged to the evangelical religion. In 
most of the districts of Germany, ruled by the 
Roman Church to-day, she owes her restoration to 



Luther and the German Nation 257 

the argument of the sword, and almost everywhere 
where the Gospel was violently stamped out, the 
German spirit languishes even now as if one of its 
wings had been broken. In the districts where 
German population is in close and unfriendly con- 
tact with our alien race, Protestantism has ever 
been our safest frontier guard. In our North- 
eastern provinces, German and Protestant, Polish 
and Roman Catholic have long been regarded as 
synonymous terms, and of all the German races 
in Austria none has remained as faithful to its 
nationality as the Protestant Saxon population 
of Siebenburgen. 

It would well become us at this festival, when the 
reformer stands in person in our midst, to remember 
the warning which he once gave to his Germans: 
*' God's Word and grace is a driving thunderstorm, 
which does not return over ground once covered. 
It visited the Jews, but is now past, and they have 
nothing of it left. Paul brought it to Greece. 
It passed away there too, and now they have 
nought but the Turks. Rome and the Latian land 
were likewise blessed; now they have lost it, and 
the Pope alone remains. And you Germans 
must not think that you will keep it for ever, for 
ingratitude and contempt will drive it hence. Let 
him therefore that can, seize what he can ; slothful 
hands will reap a bad harvest." The same de- 
structive powers which once stemmed the natural 
progress of the Reformation are still among us 
to-day, although their form is changed. Who has 
17 



258 Luther and the German Nation 

not noted the unloving disagreement among 
believers, the fleshly gospel of factious spirits, 
and the impudent self -righteousness of the epi- 
cureans, as Luther called them? 

But these blemishes are thrown into the shade by 
the more consoling signs which are not wanting 
in our age. A sense of deep and organic relation- 
ship binds the present to the age of Luther. It 
compels the artist to readopt almost unconsciously 
the architectural forms of the sixteenth century, 
and it drives the scholar to carry his researches 
into the heart of that stormy period. Many things, 
only dimly divined in Luther's day, have been 
developed and completed in ours. The new world, 
then discovered, has only lately made its entry 
into history, and its most promising and fruitful 
countries belong to the evangelical religion. Far 
away on the Pacific there are pious hearts full of 
the remembrance of the country where once was 
rocked the cradle of Martin Luther. The art of 
printing has only lately revealed itself as a link 
able to bind nation to nation. 

The unity of Germany and Italy stands secure, 
and the transformation of our German ecclesiasti- 
cal princedoms was followed by the destruction of 
the last and worst of the ecclesiastical dominations, 
the Pontifical State. Freedom of thought and 
belief has been assured to all the nations of the 
civilized world, and in the Evangelical Church a 
vigorous and unbroken continuity of life still 
manifests itself. The disunion to be observed in it 



Luther and the German Nation 259 

is but an indication of the fact that religion has a 
firmer hold on all hearts to-day than it had in the 
days of o\ir first enlightenment. But in the midst 
of the dissensions the Evangelical Church has won 
two peaceful victories at least : she has united the 
contending sister Churches of Protestantism in an 
evangelical union, and she is now engaged in the 
task of developing in her constitution the almost 
vanished idea of a congregational system. 

The period is one of great blessing, and no 
Protestant must give up hoping that even happier 
days will come, when our entire nation will honour 
Martin Luther as its hero and its teacher. The 
fact that the Reformation was not universal in its 
results on our country was, as we know, a very 
salutary one. If it had triumphed everywhere and 
held undisputed sway, the Evangelical Church 
could hardly have given free play to that spirit 
of humane and broad-minded tolerance which rules 
German life to-day. Still the period when ecclesi- 
astical differences brought a blessing is now over. 
Since the Roman Church has spoken her last word 
in proclaiming the infaUibility of the Pope, we feel 
more acutely than ever how great is the gulf which 
separates the different members of our race. To 
span this gulf, to infuse evangelical Christianity 
with sufficient vitaHty to enable it to rule our 
entire nation — this is a task which we recognize 
as ours, and which later generations will one 
day accomplish. This one purpose can never be 
fulfilled if we are faint-hearted and descend the 



26o Luther and the German Nation 

mountain which our courageous fathers climbed in 
the sweat of their brow; for never again shall a 
priest-ridden Church assemble Luther's com- 
patriots round its altars. They will follow no 
Church which does not recognize the evangelical 
freedom of the Christian, the independence of the 
believing and repentant conscience, and which 
seeks to interfere with the just rights and functions 
of the moral forces of the world, notably the 
State. Protestantism has already victoriously 
tided over more difficult periods than ours. How 
many of us to-day have ancestors who fought for 
the gospel at the White Mountain or at Lutzen, or 
who ate the bread of banishment for the sake 
of their religion ! On this birthday of the Reformer 
let us thankfully and bravely raise our voices in 
the words of his high-hearted hymn : 

And if grief last until the night, 
And then again till dawn, 
Yet shall my heart aye trust in God 
And His almighty power. 



GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS AND GERMANY'S 
FREEDOM 

{A Lecture Delivered at the Sing Academy in 
Berlin, December, i8g4) 

WHEREVER on German soil the song is heard, 
"Eine feste Burg ist Unser Gott,"^ with 
pious affection thoughts are turned to the com- 
memoration of the day which gave to us the saviour 
of our Protestant freedom. Yet it comes as a pain- 
ful echo of the civil strife of former days when we 
realize that a part only of the nation can co-oper- 
ate in this festival, and that many of our valiant 
countrymen even detest it as treasonable. For 
our own part, we will not allow our joy in the 
Northern hero to be disturbed by the fact that he 
was a foreigner, nor because it was in the darkest 
days of our country's past that his star blazed 
in the ascendant. In sharp contrast with the 
national narrowness of classical antiquity, we find 
in the history of the Christian peoples an unending 
give and take, a continuous interlacing of general 
European interests, wherein the ideals of human- 
ity are harmonized with the separate aims of the 

' '* God is to us a tower of strength." 
261 



262 Germany's Protestant Freedom 

nations. The wealth and beauty of European his- 
tory are constituted by this variegated drama, 
wherein the free brother peoples of Europe are 
seen, now hating, shunning, or fighting one an- 
other, now joining hands to work for common 
ends. Even the insular kingdom of Britain, more 
inclined than all others to reject what is of foreign 
origin, has twice in its history owed a decisive 
turn of fate to the benevolent hand of a foreigner. 
The Frenchman, Simon de Montfort, was the 
creator of the British House of Commons, and 
was the first of all men to gain the honourable 
name of Protector of the English people ; the Dutch- 
man, William of Orange, secured for the English 
their existing parliamentary government. 

Gustavus Adolphus' own home had early 
experienced alike the blessings and the curse of 
foreign domination. It was by Germany that this 
hitherto untouched region of Northern heroes was 
won for Christendom, and was incorporated within 
the community of the Latin moral world-order. 
The German Hanseatic League shut off the 
Scandinavian coast from world-trade, and with 
the overwhelming power due to its command of 
capital was able so harshly to oppress the economic 
forces of the young nations of the North that the 
three Northern capitals, Stockholm, Copenhagen, 
and Bergen, became German harbours, and for a 
time even the tenure of the crowns in the Scandi- 
navian lands became subject to the approval of the 
league of German merchants. In the sixteenth 



Germany's Protestant Freedom 263 

century, when the power of the Hanseatic League 
declined, there ensued an inevitable reaction 
against the foreign German dominion. "All 
through God and the Swedish peasantry," thus 
was worded the summons to revolt issued to his 
Dalecarlians by Gustavus Vasa, the grandfather 
of Gustavus Adolphus. Throwing off at once the 
Danish yoke, and the yoke of the German mer- 
chants, he founded in Sweden a new national 
kingdom. Ardent, rejoicing in action, highly 
cultured, ever receptive of new ideas, such was the 
wild brood of the Vasa; stormy was its passage 
through life, often burning its very self in the 
flames of its own passions. Undying was the love 
of the Swedes for the House of their great Liberator. 
At a later date, when there was a failure of the 
male line, and when the dynasty was represented 
only by the Countesses Palatine and other female 
descendants, they refused to allow the name of 
the Vasa, and the ears of wheat emblematic of the 
line, to be erased from the Swedish coat-of-arms. 
At this time, however, when our commercial 
supremacy in Scandinavia collapsed, Germany's 
thoughts again turned victoriously towards the 
North. Gustavus Vasa became a Protestant, 
and partitioned the excessive wealth of the old 
Church between the Crown and the nobles in such 
a manner that the power of the Vasas must hence- 
forward stand or fall with the Lutheran Church. 
Not here, as in Germany, did the change to Pro- 
testantism aiise freely from the conscience of the 



264 Germany's Protestant Freedom 

people; as in England, it was imposed upon the 
nation by a powerful royal house, which, gradually 
at first, and then with heart and soul, adopted 
the evangelical faith. Thus it came to pass that 
Germany, the land ecclesiastically divided by the 
Reformation, stood from now onwards between 
the Catholic world of the Romans and the strict 
Lutheranism of the North. The alliance between 
the Swedish Crown and the Lutheran Church be- 
came yet more firmly cemented when the grand- 
son of Gustavus Vasa, King Sigismund, the elected 
King of Poland, reverted to the Roman Church, 
and was in consequence driven from the country 
after a confused and fiercely contested civil 
war. Thereupon the youngest son of Gustavus 
Vasa, the father of Gustavus Adolphus, was raised 
to the forcibly evacuated throne, under the style 
of King Charles IX. He was a severe and rigid 
man of affairs, like his father a king of the poor 
people, and a protector of Protestantism. Very 
soon a threefold war broke out in this unhappy 
country, whose enormous area was at this date 
populated by barely a million inhabitants, whose 
more prosperous southern provinces of Schonen 
and Blekingen were still occupied by the Danish 
enemies, and which could carry on free intercourse 
with the rest of Europe only through a single 
North Sea port, alone unhampered by the Danish 
Sound-dues. The expelled King in Cracow de- 
manded his restoration to the throne; Poland, 
Russia, and Denmark were beginning their great 



Germany's Protestant Freedom 265 

struggle for the inheritance of the fallen Hansa 
power, and for the dominion of the Baltic. Such 
was the stress of events when the old King, whose 
end was approaching, pointed to his youthful 
successor with the words: '' Ilk faciei; he will deal 
with it all!" 

To nations, as to men of genius, there comes an 
hour in which an inner voice speaks to them, 
saying, ''Now or never shalt thou manifest thy 
best, thy most individual, qualities to the world." 
From the first moment of the reign of Gustavus 
Adolphus the Swedish people was animated by a 
clear, joyful, and ever-increasing consciousness of 
victory. The introspective Lutheran doctrine, 
which elsewhere so often led its adherents to 
passive obedience, and to a withdrawal from the 
struggles of political life, became here, upon this 
Northern soil, contentious, like its more vigorous 
sister, Calvinism ; and soon from every pulpit went 
forth the prophecy that this Gustavus was to be 
the Augustus of the Protestant North. A man 
altogether after the people's heart was this lad 
of seventeen, blond, with shining blue eyes, over- 
topping by half a head his tall fellow-countrymen, 
serene-spirited and filled with the joy of life, 
simple with the simplicity of the old North-land — 
for how often did he wait good-humouredly with 
his companions for the frozen wine to thaw in the 
goblets! — a master in the art of speech, and if 
need should arise a master also in the moving and 
homely eloquence of his grandfather. A careful 



266 Germany's Protestant Freedom 

education had introduced the boy, precocious in 
development and avid of learning, to the whole 
range of the culture of his time. And yet, as soon 
became manifest to all, his heart was in the pro- 
— % fession of arms. Pictures of battle and of victory 
chased one another through his dreams. He 
rejoiced to know that in his own veins ran pure 
the blood of the Gothic heroes. Inseparably and 
indistinguishably interfused in his mind with this 
warlike national pride was the serious fervour of 
his Lutheran creed. The great memories of the 
House of Vasa, the close relationship with the old 
Protestant races of Brandenburg, Holstein, Hesse, 
and the Palatinate, the campaign against his 
Catholic cousin in Poland, the general position 
of Sweden in the world — all forced him into the 
Protestant camp. With kingly glance surveying 
the religious struggles of the time, he asked only 
that the Churches, no longer able to control one 
another by force, should rather learn the lesson 
of mutual toleration. But he was not one like 
Richelieu, or Wallenstein, to regard the Church as 
a mere means to political ends; he lived by the 
Protestant faith, he knew the power of prayer, 
and with full heart he sang, Verzage nicht, du 
Hduflein klein. ^ The ardour and sincerity of his 
religious belief remind us of the men of a day long 
past, of the leaders of the League of Schmalkald, 
John Frederick of Saxony and Philip of Hesse, 
were it not that in Gustavus Adolphus the might of 

^ "Never despair, you little band." 



Germany's Protestant Freedom 267 

faith awakened, not the patience of the martyr, but 
the activity of the hero. 

With the aid of his youthful Chancellor, Oxen- 
stiern, torn as his country was by civil war, the 
King grounded within a few years the best-ordered 
hierarchical monarchy of his day. Lagerquist- 
Lorbeerzweig, Oernfiycht-Adelfiucht, Erenrot- 
Ehrenwurzel — such were the proud names of the 
noble houses which here in Sweden, as throughout 
the aristocratic world around the shores of the 
Baltic, unwillingly bent their stiff necks before the 
power of the Monarchy. With astonishing speed 
were the members of this iron-handed aristocracy 
won for the service of the Crown by the lure of 
renown and booty ; every nobleman who in time of 
war remained at home to guard his own kitchen- 
midden was deprived of his crown-fief. For this 
reason it was possible to impose also upon the 
faithful peasantry the heavy burden of military ser- 
vice ; every year the clergy announced from their 
pulpits the names of the young men who were 
summoned for duty. The general administration 
of the country was conducted by the King through 
the intermediation of five great local boards. Free 
deliberation was permitted to the four orders of his 
Reichstag, but once the King had made his own 
decision he demanded absolute obedience, for, as 
he phrased it, "no laurels of war can flourish in an 
atmosphere of eternal dispute." Thus sure of 
his own people, he undertook to bring to an end 
the three wars left him as a legacy by his father. 



268 Germany's Protestant Freedom 

and in nineteen years' campaigning built up for 
himself an army accustomed to victory. Only 
with much labour was he able to enforce a supe- 
riority over the Danes. Thereupon, turning to at- 
tack the most dangerous enemy of all, he directed 
himself against the Muscovites; driving the 
Russians from their robbers' nest on the Baltic, he 
conquered Ingermanland [now the governmental 
area of Petrograd] and Karelia [South-eastern 
Finland], the whole bordering country of the Gulf 
of Finland, and in the neighbourhood of the 
modern Petersburg he erected the column which 
announces to the world that here Gustavus Adol- 
phus established the boundary of his kingdom. 
He then led his devoted followers against the 
Poles, and here for the first time encountered 
the armed forces of the counter-Reformation. To 
the kingdom of Poland, hitherto rejoicing in vic- 
tory, he brought the first great defeat of two 
centuries, conquering Livonia, securing for the 
Protestant Church its threatened possessions, and 
establishing his power in the seaports of Prussia. 
More and more clearly was now manifested the 
leading idea of his life, the foundation of a great 
Scandinavian Empire, which should unite under 
the blue and yellow flag of Sweden all the 
dominions of the Baltic Sea. 

These manifold successes fell to the arms of 
Gustavus Adolphus without any interference 
upon the part of the Powers of the West, for no 
states-system was yet in existence. The region of 



Germany's Protestant Freedom 269 

Central Europe, this Germany of ours, destined in 
a future day to unite the East and the West of 
Europe into a Hving Society of States, lay now 
prostrate, bleeding from a thousand wounds, torn 
asunder by a fierce struggle of factions; and only 
when Gustavus Adolphus, in his victorious pro- 
gress, approached the German frontiers was he 
drawn into the maelstrom of the great German 
War. For sixty-three years had Germany, as in 
a dream, lived at peace under the ^gis of the 
Augsburg Confession — a false peace, for it gave 
no satisfaction to the heart, and left imsolved all 
the great contested questions of our imperial law. 
Looking on idly, acquiescing in these stormy 
quarrels of the Lutheran and Calvinistic theo- 
logians, the Protestants of Germany had watched 
the Jesuits leading back in time of peace, now 
through cunning and now through force, whole 
areas of the South and of the West into the Romish 
Church; they had looked on whilst in the Burgund- 
ian region of the Empire, at the mouth of the 
great German river, the Dutch had waged a 
desperate war against the world-wide Monarchy of 
the Hapsburgs; they had heard the warning of 
William of Orange: "If Germany remains an inert 
spectator of our tragedy, a war will assuredly 
break out on her own soil in comparison with 
which all previous wars will seem a trifle!" Now 
the prophecy was fulfilled. The most terrible of 
all wars began, terrible not merely through the 
savagery of the armies engaged in the struggle, but 



270 Germany's Protestant Freedom 

also through its lack of ideal aims; for in this 
unhappy Empire, tossed to and fro among four 
factions, religious and political contrasts became 
involved in a hopeless confusion, and of the lofty 
passions of the early days of the Reformation 
there remained hardly anything beyond obscure 
and evil-minded ecclesiastical hatred. 

The two lines of the House of Hapsburg, the 
Austrian and the Spanish, made common cause 
against heresy; they allied themselves with Maxi- 
milian of Bavaria, the leader of the German Catho- 
lic League, with the Italian Princes,, and with the 
Crown of Poland. Almost the whole of European 
Catholicism, France alone excepted, employed its 
mercenary troops in the service of this imperial 
policy, which, firm, cool-handed, and favoured by 
fortune, advanced towards its goal, arousing the 
admiration even of Gustavus Adolphus by the 
relentless force of its will. "The Emperor," 
said Gustavus more than once, "is a great states- 
man, and does everything that turns to his own 
advantage." As a speedy result, all the heredi- 
tary dominions of the Emperor, not excepting 
Bohemia, the ancient home of heresy, and the 
Protestant peasantry of Upper Austria, returned 
to the Roman fold. South Germany was sub- 
dued, the Elector Palatine was driven from his 
country and his people; the Spaniards occupied 
a chain of fortresses along the Rhine, and were 
thus enabled to send troops safely from Milan, 
by way of the Tyrol and through Germany, to 



Germany's Protestant Freedom 271 

attack the Netherlands. Next, the small armies 
of the Protestant leaders of the North were routed, 
and at length the Danish Prince was driven out of 
Holstein. As in the days ' of the Othos, the 
Emperor's troops penetrated even into Jutland. 
The imperial flag, bearing the double eagle and the 
image of the Virgin, waved victoriously along 
the shores of the Baltic and the North Sea. Wal- 
lenstein, the Czech Commander-in-Chief of the im- 
perial forces, was already laying the foundations of 
a sea-power, wishing, by means of a canal between 
Wismar and the Elbe, to unite the Baltic with the 
North Sea, and proposing to found an imperial 
harbour at Jahdebusen, at the very door of the 
Dutch rebels, where Wilhelmshaven now stands. 

In the year 1629, the imperial policy uttered 
its last word. The Restitution Edict excluded 
the members of the Reformed Churches from the 
toleration of the Augsburg Confession, and decreed 
that all the ecclesiastical foundations which since 
the date of the Augsburg Confession had belonged 
to the Evangelical Church, all the great immediate 
bishoprics of the old Germania sacra of the North, 
Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Bremen, and Liibeck, 
the prince-bishoprics of Meissen, Brandenburg, 
and many others, should revert to the Roman 
dominion. What a prospect! The peaceful 
development of two generations was to be swept 
away by this arbitrary decree. The Protestant 
inhabitants of these old ecclesiastical areas were 
once more to be subjected to the rule of the crosier, 



272 Germany's Protestant Freedom 

and an Archduke was to reign at Magdeburg as 
Catholic Archbishop! Had these measures been 
carried out, the very roots of German Protestant- 
ism would have been cut away, alike politically and 
ecclesiastically; Protestantism would, in fact, have 
been completely annihilated; and further, the 
Princely Houses of the Empire attached to the 
reformed doctrine, those of Brandenburg, of Hesse, 
of the Palatinate, and of the Anhalts of Ascania, 
would have been deprived of their dominions as 
rebels and heretics ; and indeed the Mecklenburgs, 
the Brunswicks, and numerous other Protestant 
Princes, had already fallen into misery, and had 
been forced to surrender their lands to the military 
chiefs of the Empire. Never was our Fatherland 
so near to the attainment of unity, and Wallenstein 
had voiced the threat that there was no longer any 
need of Princes and Electors. But the unity that 
would thus have been imposed by the Spanish 
priests of the Society of Jesus, by condottieri 
and mercenary soldiers owning allegiance to no 
fatherland of their own, would have destroyed 
all freedom of spirit, would have annihilated our 
German ego. A cry of horror arose from the entire 
Protestant world. But whence could any help 
come? The lands of the only two Protestant 
Princes who still wore the electoral ermine, those of 
Brandenburg and Saxony, were overrun by the 
imperial armies. Moreover, both these Electors 
were paralyzed, their wills were divided, they were 
influenced by the traditional spirit of allegiance to 



Germany's Protestant Freedom 273 

the Emperor, a spirit admirable even if mistaken ; 
they were paral^^zed by the undisciplined state 
of their principalities, rendering impossible the 
eflPective levying of troops. There was no hope 
here. Such was the dissension among the German 
Protestants, so absolute was their ineffectiveness, 
that help could come from a foreign Power alone. 
The King of Sweden was left no other choice. 
He was well acquainted with the general state of 
European affairs ; he had long vainly endeavoured 
to induce the Protestant Powers of Northern 
Europe that still remained free — England, Hol- 
land, and Denmark — to form a league against 
the Hapsburgs; once already, during his Polish 
campaign, he had fought unsuccessfully with 
the imperial troops on the heath of Stuhm. If 
the power of the licentious imperial soldiery 
were to be extended yet farther along the Baltic, 
not only would his dream of a great Northern 
monarchy be shattered, but even his existing 
small kingdom would be endangered, for unques- 
tionably in that case the Polish Vasas who were 
allied with Austria would endeavour to reconquer 
the vSwedish Crown. "It is by the safety of our 
neighbours," said Gustavus to his faithful sup- 
porters, " that we must secure our own. " In fiery 
words he added — he who had never learned to 
play the hypocrite^ — "I will liberate my oppressed 
fellow-believers from the Papal yoke. " Political 
duty and religious duty called to him with one 
voice. In the outcome, as always when decisions 

18 



274 Germany*s Protestant Freedom 

of world-historical importance are in question, we 
note the half -hidden working of genius, the secret 
conviction of fateful consequences and of divine 
inspiration. 

In July, 1630, he landed on Riigen, just one 
hundred years after the Protestants of Germany 
had made their Confession of Faith. That forlorn 
widow, the Augsburg Confession, had at length 
found her consoler. Yet almost a whole year 
elapsed before the Princes of North Germany could 
overcome their fear of the Emperor and their mis- 
trust of the foreign helper. A shining figure, 
inspired by heroic confidence, did Gustavus appear 
among these timorous hesitants. "I tell you that 
no middle course is possible," he repeats again 
and again in his speeches; **the Rubicon is crossed, 
the die is cast; the fight is between God and the 
devil, and there is no third side. What sort of 
a thing is neutrality? I know not the word!" 
Slowly pushing his way forward in a laborious 
campaign, which long afterwards aroused the pro- 
found admiration of Napoleon, he penetrated with 
his little army into Pomerania and the Mark, receiv- 
ing secret financial aid from France, but being all 
the while extremely careful to keep this dangerous 
neighbour from more active intervention in the 
German war. A diplomatic turn of events at the 
Imperial Court at length brought some clearness 
into the confusion. Wallenstein, the worldly 
warrior, who wished all priests at the devil, desired 
to come to terms with Sweden, to get the German 



Germany's Protestant Freedom 275 

Protestants on his side, by restricting the appli- 
cation of the Restitution Edict, and then to use 
the combined forces of Austria, Spain, and united 
Germany against CathoHc France and the Pro- 
testant Netherlands, in order to extend the 
Hapsburg dominion over the whole of Latin 
Europe. The Catholic League, on the other 
hand, and the clerical party at the Viennese Court, 
demanded the uprooting of the North German 
heresy, and unrelenting warfare against North 
Germany's Swedish allies. The Emperor Ferdin- 
and was pulled one way by his Commander-in- 
Chief and the other by his spiritual director. 
The priests naturally won the game. Wallen- 
stein was overthrown, and during the three and 
a half years which Gustavus Adolphus spent 
upon German soil, the confused struggle, though 
continually changing its complexion, never ceased 
to present the characteristics of a religious war. 

It was now indeed a fight for the very existence 
of Protestantism. The imperial armies were led 
by the Walloon, Tilly, who, though less remorse- 
less than the savage Wallenstein, was even more 
cordially hated by our Protestant people, who 
saw in him the actual embodiment of the churchly 
hatred of the Catholic party. To the battle-cry 
of the imperial troops, ''Mary, Mother of God,'* 
the army of Gustavus Adolphus made answer, 
*'God is on our side!" 

When Magdeburg had been burned by the 
imperial forces, and when the lamentable fall of 



276 Germany*s Protestant Freedom 

this martyr-town of Protestantism (which had 
once defied the armies of Charles V) had been 
greeted by the Catholic world with a howl of 
derision, Gustavus Adolphus determined to con- 
strain his still hesitating brother-in-law of Branden- 
burg to join the Protestant alliance. The timorous 
Elector of Saxony now also made up his mind. 
The King of Sweden crossed the Elbe, and the 
Protestants drew breath once more to see how in the 
camp at Werben he gave pause to the never yet 
defeated Tilly. Thence he was drawn southward 
by an appeal for help from the Elector of Saxony, 
and in the great battle-ground of Central Ger- 
many (twice again to be devastated in the present 
war), on the Leipzig plain near Breitenfeld, matters 
came to a decisive issue. The imperial knights, 
heedlessly pursuing the Saxon troops, the defeated 
left wing of the Protestant army, were suddenly 
attacked on their own left flank by a rapid 
wheeling movement of the Swedish centre; Tilly's 
disorganized and closely-packed forces were over- 
run by the readily mobile and rapidly firing 
lines of the Swedes. The unconquerable Walloon 
chief was utterly defeated, and, in a moment, 
despair was lifted from the hearts of the Protest- 
ants. The faithful town of Stralsund, which had 
been victorious over Wallenstein, sent the hero- 
King the following greeting : 

Der Leu aus Mitternacht, den Gottes Geist ver- 
heissen, 



Germany's Protestant Freedom 277 

Der Babels Stolz und Pracht soil brechen und zer- 

reissen ! 
Wo's Fahnen in der Luft, wo's Sturm und Schlachten 

gibt, 
Das ist ein Freudenspiel, das unser Leu beliebt.' 

Now for the first time since the days of Martin 
Luther there was displayed before the eyes of our 
people the figure of a man towards whom all must 
look either in love or in hate. It was the day of 
liberation. German Protestantism was rescued; 
equality of beliefs was assured. No longer was it 
possible to speak of any such uprooting of Protest- 
antism as had been planned by the Restitution 
Edict; and in view of the character of this war, 
carried on in a land without a capital city, con- 
ducted by small armies in many different places 
at once and under the walls of innumerable fort- 
resses it was hardly possible to expect that there 
should occur another complete reversal of the 
fortunes of war. 

Gustavus Adolphus found his truest friends 
among the warm-hearted Protestants of South 
Germany, who had almost forgotten how to hope. 
A shout of exultation, a cry of irrepressible grati- 
tude, arose from them, as he turned towards Fran- 
conia, in order here also to lift from the people 

* "The Lion of the North-land, Saviour by God foretold, 
To dust shall bring and ashes the pride of Babel old! 
Where wave the flags, where screams the storm, where 

rages fierce the fight, 
'Tis there, in midmost battle, our Lion finds delight." 



278 Germany's Protestant Freedom 

the burden of Catholic oppression. In Nurem- 
berg the people crowded round the King, while 
celebrating his heroic personality in song, in pic- 
ture, and in speech : " If you wish to see him all in 
all, you must look the world over!" A retinue of 
German Protestant Princes, among whom was 
Frederick, the dethroned King of Bohemia, now 
surrounded him; the Swedes and Livonians he 
had brought with him to Riigen were joined by 
auxiliary regiments raised in Germany, and the 
two nations made common cause in an unremitting 
quest for fighting men. Amid the popular jubi- 
lation which rose tumultuously on all sides, 
Gustavus Adolphus never forgot that he was amid 
foreigners; and on one occasion, when a quarrel 
arose among his German associates, he said: "I 
would rather herd swine in my own country than 
have to do with such a nation of imbeciles." 
After a sojourn in the Rhineland, he turned his 
steps towards Bavaria, the Acropolis of the 
Catholic League. In a bloody contest on the 
Lech, Tilly lost the battle and his life. The 
Elector Maximilian took to flight, abandoning 
Munich to the conqueror. In the residential 
Schloss, the ever-burning lamp, which for so long 
had been kept alight before the image of the Virgin, 
the Patroness of Bavaria, was now extinguished; 
but the service of God became free to all, and 
the Jesuits cried angrily to the King: "Yours is 
the sin; you were sent to bring peace, and you have 
sown war." Never before had the power of his 



Germany's Protestant Freedom 279 

personality shone forth so radiantly. Even the 
Bavarian people, at first profoundly hostile, began 
to yield him their affection, as he rode alone 
among them through the narrow streets in simple 
cloak and slouched hat, throwing gold to the crowd, 
and talking confidentially with the common folk. 

He stood now at the summit of his fame, and 
also at the tragical turning-point of his career. 
He could not escape the curse which ever falls 
upon the foreign conqueror. But the daily work 
of his life, in so far as it could bring salvation to us 
Germans, was completed. Undoubtedly he cher- 
ished dreams of Cassarism, dreams that must be- 
come more persistent as his victories became 
more extensive. Not with a small reward could 
the hot blood of the Vasas be appeased, nor was it 
by chance that upon the trappings of his war- 
charger there gleamed the gilded imperial eagles. 
Yet in truth the Roman Imperial throne, insepa- 
rably associated with the Catholic Church, 
and dependent upon the Catholic majority of the 
Electors of the Empire, could never seem an object 
of desire to one who with all his venturesomeness 
never lost the sense of what was possible. He 
remained King of Sweden. How then, in this age 
of harsh political rationaHsm, when everyone 
regarded his neighbour as a possible enemy, could 
Gustavus desire the union of Germany? "All 
my successes here," he was accustomed to say, 
''rest upon my homeland"; always he held fast 
to the thought of his Greater Scandinavian Em- 



28o Germany's Protestant Freedom 

pire. He wished to add to the domains of his own 
Crown Pomerania, and whatever else he could of 
the German coast lands ; he hoped with the aid of 
the granaries of this region to ensure the food 
supply of his impoverished native country. It 
was thus his aim to cut off the German Empire 
from the sea, and to hem in Denmark in such a way 
that sooner or later all the confines of the Baltic 
should pass under the rule of the Vasas. If, until 
further notice, he exacted homage from the con- 
quered Franconian bishoprics, this was for two rea- 
sons only, in part to give these ecclesiastical lands 
in fief to Bernard of Weimar, and his faithful allies 
among the Protestant Princes, and in part to retain 
them in pledge with a view, when peace should 
come, to exchange them for German coast lands. 
When he had acquired these extensive possessions 
on the Baltic he would be able, he believed, to 
enter the German Reichstag as a stateholder, as 
director of a Corpus Evangelicorum which should 
form a State within the State, an ordered opposi- 
tion, to maintain the equality of the creeds. A 
portion of these aims was subsequently accom- 
plished by the hands of his weaker successors in 
the terms of the Treaty of Westphalia — and who 
can now deny that the religious peace of the 
Empire was thus ensured, though at a grave, a 
destructive cost to the integrity of our political 
power? We need not hesitate to proclaim that it 
was by the kindness of fate that the saviour of 
German Protestantism was called to his account at 



Germany's Protestant Freedom 281 

the very moment when he must otherwise have 
become the enemy of our national state. 

Terrified by the victories of this Gothic hero, the 
Emperor resolved to recall Wallenstein to power, 
and to restore him to uncontrolled command 
of the imperial forces; and as soon as the 
recruiting trumpets of the fortunate Friedlander 
began to sound, the fighting men, greedy of fame 
and plunder, flocked to his standard in crowds. 
Gustavus Adolphus was soon to learn that he 
had at length met his equal. He was unable to 
prevent a junction between the imperial and the 
Bavarian armies. When subsequently Wallen- 
stein, besieged in the Old Fortifications of Nurem- 
berg, remained firmly entrenched, the Swedish 
army again and again vainly attempted to take 
the position by storm. The King had to abandon 
the siege, and the Friedlander wrote in his boastful 
style, ''Here the Swede was compelled timorously 
to draw in his horns." Now Wallenstein turned 
northward against Central Germany. His Croats 
in Thuringia and Hoik's riders in the Erzgebirge 
wrought fire and slaughter. Gustavus Adolphus 
followed Wallenstein towards the North, for his 
homeward line of retreat was threatened. The 
ravaged Thuringians greeted him joyfully and 
embraced his knees. The view of the naked and 
suffering was a great shock to him. "God will 
punish me, " he said, ''for these people honour me 
as a God!" On the field of Liitzen, quite close 
to the site of the most magnificent of his earlier 



282 Germany*s Protestant Freedom 

victories, he joined battle. The soldiers of both 
nations, Germans and Swedes, greeted their com- 
mander as he rode by with loud clashing of their 
arms, and he uttered the prayer, " Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, 
let us fight to-day in Thy name!" It was thus 
with a prayer upon his lips that he plunged into 
the thick autumnal fog, to find a hero's death. 
His influence was the last flash of the ideal in 
this monstrous war. The Swedish armies, speedily 
lapsing into savagery when the strict disciplinarian 
was removed, now fought only about the miserable 
question, how many fragments of German land 
should be allotted to them in compensation. They 
were joined in alliance by France, for with the 
death of Gustavus Adolphus, a free hand was 
given to French designs in Germany. Neverthe- 
less, the inexhaustible energy of our nation soon 
produced a new political structure. The great 
Elector of Brandenburg, the nephew of Gustavus 
Adolphus, became at once his heir and his enemy. 
At the Westphalian Peace Congress, Brandenburg 
succeeded in bringing about a complete victory for 
the ecclesiastical ideas of Gustavus Adolphus, 
effecting an honourable religious peace, and se- 
curing equality for all creeds. Within the interior, 
too, of the young Prussian State, the Swedish 
traditions long remained operative. By studying 
the example of his uncle, the Elector Frederick 
William learned how to control the power of the 
estates of the realm, and to maintain a powerful 
and warlike monarchical rule. Through the 



Germany's Protestant Freedom 283 

influence of the Swedish veterans who took ser- 
vice under the Red Eagle, many Swedish mihtary 
practices were introduced into the young army, 
such as a ready mobiHty of the troops, increased 
rapidity of fire for the infantry, and the use of 
Gustavus Adolphus* war-cry, "Gott mit uns!" 
Yet so ambiguous are all historical tendencies, that 
it was Frederick William who first began the de- 
struction of the political work of his uncle. The 
Swedes exacted the payment of a terrible price 
for their help. They established themselves as 
masters along all our coasts, and, as Frederick 
WilHam complained, the Weser, the Elbe, and the 
Oder were all in foreign hands. For nearly two 
hundred years Prussia had to struggle, now with 
the sword and now with the pen, against the 
Swedish dominion, from the time of the first 
Northern War and the victory of Fehrbellin, 
in 1675, until at length, in the year 1815, the last 
traces of Swedish control passed away and North 
Germany once more became master in its own 
household. 

Of the three colossi whose names then filled the 
world with alarm, the figure of Wallenstein appears 
the gloomiest. He was, unquestionably, a great 
warrior, yet a homeless man, always willing to 
sacrifice his nationality and his faith on the shrine 
of his ambition. He was an adventurer of genius, 
hoping now for an Italian and now for a German 
princely coronet ; now dreaming of a world dominion 
for the House of Hapsburg, now of a Holy War 



284 Germany's Protestant Freedom 

against the Turks, and now of a new sack of 
Rome ; and yet amid all these gigantic plans think- 
ing always and only of his own great ego. "God 
in heaven; I, myself, on earth, " such was his blas- 
phemous motto, and he died the dreadful death of 
the betrayer. A more auspicious figure is that of 
Richelieu, for this French Bismarck was firmly 
planted upon that soil of nationality wherein is 
rooted all political greatness. He brought to 
completion all that which the policy of the French 
kings had been carefully preparing for centuries, 
the unity of his Fatherland. But alike in nobiHty 
of soul and in human greatness Gustavus Adolphus 
excels both the others. His fate resembled that of 
Alexander of Macedon, for the two men were 
alike in the rapidity of their victory and in their 
sudden and premature deaths. Alexander's world- 
dominion broke up upon the death of its founder, 
but for hundreds of years what he had done for 
the civilization of humanity remained. He com- 
pelled the Greeks to replace Greek nationalism by 
the citizenship of the world; he transformed the 
material rule of Greece into the dominion of the 
Greek spirit; he disseminated Greek culture 
throughout Asia Minor, and thus it became possi- 
ble for the message of the Christian gospels to be 
conveyed in the Greek tongue to all the Mediter- 
ranean peoples. In like manner vanished the 
greater Scandinavian Empire of Gustavus Adol- 
phus. Neither of the two artificially constructed 
Great Powers of the seventeenth century, the sea- 



Germany's Protestant Freedom 285 

power of Holland and the land-power of Sweden, 
could persist, for their foundations were too slender; 
the one was overthrown by England, and the other 
by Prussian Germany, which were better in a 
position to maintain themselves as Great Powers, 
being endowed with stronger natural forces. But 
that which has persisted, that which, God willing, 
shall persist for all time, is the free Protestant 
Word, which Gustavus Adolphus preserved for the 
heart of Europe; that which has persisted is the 
living mutual tolerance of the German creeds. 
Upon these things has been established our new 
united Empire, unified politically though composite 
ecclesiastically; upon these things has been estab- 
lished our entire modern civilization; upon these 
rests that fine humanity which enables the Ger- 
mans, Protestants and Catholics alike, to enjoy a 
thought which is at once free and pious. 

It is for these reasons that to-day with full heart 
we express our thankfulness to our Swedish kins- 
men and neighbours, to those who first received at 
our hands the blessings of the Reformation, and sub- 
sequently sent us as saviour the Lion of the North- 
land. Nowhere is this gratitude more manifest 
than in this youthful colony of Old Germany, 
which a wonderful destiny has raised to the premier 
position in the new Empire. For three hundred 
years only did these countries of the March belong 
to the Romish Church, and for more than three and 
a half centuries now have they enjoyed Protestant 
freedom. Here we live and work in the free air of 



286 Germany's Protestant Freedom 

Protestantism. Not with a view to the re-opening 
of old wounds, but simply in order to give honour 
where honour is due, has Protestant Germany- 
grounded upon the name of the Swedish King that 
noble institution which brings help and consolation 
to our oppressed Protestant brethren throughout 
the world. Gustavus Adolphus does not belong 
to a single nation, but to the whole of Protestant 
Christendom. 



OUR EMPIRE 

{Berlin, 1886.) 

[Prefatory Note by Translator. — In the essay which follows, 
Treitschke employs the terms monarchy and monarchical, some- 
times in the sense usual in England, sometimes rather to signify 
autocracy and autocratic. I have thought it preferable to retain the 
former terms throughout, as the context will always make the 
meaning evident, once the reader's attention has been drawn to 
the possible ambiguity.] 

TWENTY-TWO years ago, when I wrote my es- 
say upon ' * The Federal State and the Central- 
ized State" (Bundesstaat und Einheitsstaat) , I had 
an obscure premonition that a great hour was 
approaching for our Fatherland, and that the 
good sword of Prussia would cut the Gordian knot 
of the old federal policy. Since then, by a wonder- 
ful dispensation of Providence, the boldest dreams 
that I ventured in the above-mentioned essay have 
been realized to a degree exceeding my utmost 
expectations, and the rich history of our re-estab- 
lished Empire has rendered necessary a critical 
revision of the theory of confederations and other 
unions of states. As long ago as 1874 I myself 
attempted a scientific appreciation of our recently 
acquired political experiences, and in the present 
essay I give no more than a summary of what 

287 



288 Our Empire 

I then expounded in detail in my treatise on 
"Federation and Empire" {Bund und Reich). 

The theory of G. Waitz, which assumes in the 
federal state a division of sovereignty between the 
central administration and the separate states of 
the federation, is not merely inapplicable to Ger- 
man conditions, but is in open contradiction with 
the very nature of the vState, and also with the 
constitution of the Swiss Confederation and with 
that of the American Union. For the very reason 
that the chief administration is the chief, a division 
of its sovereignty is inconceivable, and the sole 
scientifically possible distinction between the con- 
federation of states and the federal state is to be 
found in this, that in the confederation of states 
sovereignty attaches to the members of the 
confederation, to the individual states, whereas 
in the federal state it attaches to the centralized 
unity. The confederation of states is a union 
of sovereign states based upon international law; 
the individual elements of the confederation are 
not the citizens of the respective states of the 
confederation, but the national governments of 
these, and the said governments are competent, 
in accordance with international law, to declare 
the confederation dissolved in the event of any 
breach in its constitution. The federal state is an 
image of state-right, and is for this reason, like any 
other state, legally eternal and indissoluble. Its ad- 
ministration has the unrestricted power possessed 
by that of any sovereign state. It passes laws 



Our Empire 289 

which override the individual-state laws, and which 
must be obeyed by the individual states and by the 
citizens of these ; in the carrying of its decisions into 
effect it employs, as the circumstances may dictate, 
now its own immediate officials, now the individual 
states, and sometimes both together, but always 
retains the powers of supervision and control; 
finally, in it is vested the determination of the 
prerogatives of the individual states, for the central 
government of the federal state always possesses 
the faculty of enlarging its own powers by a 
revision of the constitution. Directly a confedera- 
tion of states becomes transformed into a federal 
state, the sovereignty of the individual states 
disappears, for the individual states become subject 
to the authority of the newly formed federal state, 
and are liable to be punished by this last for dis- 
obedience or high treason — as was proved alike 
theoretically and practically by the Civil War in 
the United States of America. The federal state 
is more closely akin than is the confederation of 
states to the fully unified state, the sole difference 
being that in the case of the federal state the deci- 
sions of the central government come into effect 
only through the co-operation of the individual 
states, and that the prerogatives still retained by 
these have not been formally handed over to the 
central power. For this reason the transition from 
a confederation of states to a federal state is a 
process which always involves severe struggles and 
often actual war, for the individual states of a 
19 



290 Our Empire 

confederation will not readily abandon their 
sovereign powers. 

This federal state constitution such as is pos- 
sessed by Switzerland and the United States has 
certain characteristics which belong also to the 
constitution of the German Empire. Our Empire, 
too, possesses a supreme centralized administra- 
tion, whose decisions are effected in co-operation 
with the individual states, decisions, obedience to 
which is exacted alike from these states and from 
their citizens. With us, also, the principle holds 
good that national law overrides state law. Like 
the states of the American Union and like the Swiss 
Cantons, the individual German states have lost 
their sovereignty, and from the strictly scientific 
standpoint can no longer be regarded as states, for 
they lack the two rights upon which, so long as 
there has been any theory of government, the idea 
of sovereignty has been grounded — the right to 
take up arms, and the power to determine the ex- 
tent of their own prerogatives. They do not pos- 
sess personal or individual freedom of action under 
international law ; in the society of states they can- 
not exhibit the powers of an independent will, 
and they are subordinated to the Empire which 
protects them with the might of its arms ; they are 
incompetent to enlarge the sphere of their own 
prerogatives in accordance with their own desires, 
for they must rest content with the prerogatives 
allotted to them by the central government, which 
always retains the power of further restriction. 



Our Empire 291 

It is true that the language of the Constitution as 
well as the language of common life speaks of the 
States of the German Confederation; but the 
Constitution, more especially in respect of these 
complicated federal relationships, is always guided 
by historical considerations, or by considerations of 
political expediency, and is thereby often involved 
in error from the strictly scientific outlook. The 
states of the Republic of the United Netherlands 
were for two hundred years officially styled 
"Provinces," although they were unquestionably 
sovereign states. In Switzerland, the sovereign 
members of the Confederation were from 18 14 
onw^ards given the modest name of Canton, and 
this name was preserved after the radical alteration 
of the constitution in the year 1848; whereas the 
individual members of the North American Union 
retain in the federal state the title of State under 
which they entered the original confederation. 

It might seem desirable, for the sake of peace, 
to avoid the open proclamation of this truth, 
which is disagreeab e to the advocates of sepa- 
ratism; but science must not lie, must not out 
of respect to the vanity of the German princes 
abandon those fundamentals of political theory 
which have been acquired by the difficult labour 
of hundreds of years — must pay no attention to the 
foolish dicta of not a few professors, to the effect 
that to-day there exist "non-sovereign" as well as 
"sovereign states." Since it is certain that any 
community becomes a state from the moment that 



292 Our Empire 

it attains to sovereignty, and since it is certain that 
a state becomes transformed into a province 
directly it is forced to recognize the sovereignty of a 
conqueror, it necessarily follows that in sovereignty 
is to be found the essential characteristic of the 
state, the characteristic by which the state is dis- 
tinguished from all other human communities. A 
*' state of states, " a state that rules over states, is 
theoretically an absurdity, and in practice it is 
unending anarchy. Such a state of states was 
the monstrum politicum of Pufendorf, the Holy 
Roman Empire in its closing centuries. When we 
find Ludolf Hugo, Putter, and other imperial 
publicists, endeavouring to find consolation for 
the miseries of Germany in the insane notions 
of the Over-State and the Under-State, we may 
ascribe this to the urgency of patriotic need; but 
we must not apply to the active and vigorous 
national structures of our own day these oppor- 
tunist phrases born out of the processes of decom- 
position of a community on the way to destruction. 
The communities subordinated to the authority 
of a modern federal state are themselves no longer 
states, and this statement applies to the individual 
communities which make up the German Empire. 
Such superficial comparisons, however, hardly 
touch the kernel of the matter. No reflective 
statesman can deny that our Empire is a quite 
pecuHar structure, sharply distinguished in its 
history, in its position in the world, and in its 
aims, from the federal states of America and 



Our Empire 293 

Switzerland. The high-sounding phrase, ' ' Empire 
is a concept utterly foreign to the domain of 
Public Law," does not render non-existent this 
incontrovertible fact. The Empire exists and will 
continue to flourish long after the present doctrines 
of imperial law have been forgotten. It does not 
become theory to endeavour to fit the great new 
formations of history to the Procrustean bed of 
ready-made concepts. Theory remains true only 
when it continues to learn from life, and when its 
concepts are subject to continuous transformation 
in accordance with the teachings of experience. 
Law is ever subject to the danger of becoming 
enmeshed in its own formalisms; the doctrine of 
public law becomes utterly futile if it attempts 
to throw a dam athwart the main stream of history, 
if it shirks the labour of studying, in addition to the 
frame-work of existing laws, those laws also which 
are decaying and those which are springing to life, 
if it refuses to pay due attention to those political 
relationships which are undergoing incorporation in 
constitutional forms. 

Anyone properly equipped with the historical 
sense, who approaches the study of German im- 
perial law, cannot fail to recognize two important 
distinctions which forbid any comparison with 
the federal states of America and Switzerland. 
The constitution of these two federal states rests 
upon the equality of all the members of the federal 
union, but our imperial constitution rests upon 
inequality, upon the preponderant power of 



294 Our Empire 

Prussia. To the crown of this leading State is 
attached a hereditary right to the imperial throne; 
and there is attached also a monarchical dominion 
which, though still incomplete in form, grows 
stronger daily under our very eyes, and which 
represents the ideas of national unity far more 
effectively than the central authority of a federal 
state can ever represent them. In the great days 
of its history, Germany was a national monarchy. 
As this monarchical feudal dominion fell to pieces 
and the power of its kingship passed into the hands 
of the estates of the Empire, a new monarchical 
Power, that of the Crown of Prussia, gradually 
became established upon the site of these territorial 
states. It was Prussia which created our new Em- 
pire, which liberated us from Austria, and which, 
by the annexations of the year 1866, enlarged 
the area of its own direct rule, and thus became 
empowered to direct the fate of the whole of Ger- 
many. By right of sword, by the might of estab- 
lished fact, Prussia was enabled to impose upon 
the sovereign states of the North the compacts 
which led to the formation of the North German 
Federation; and this new national state was sub- 
sequently joined by the states of South Germany, 
for these recognized that the maintenance of their 
independent sovereignty had become impossible, 
and they were no longer able to resist the national 
impulse towards unity, which had now at length 
found full expression. The Prussian army and 
navy, the Prussian postal and telegraphic services, 



Our Empire '295 

the Prussian customs, and the Prussian banking 
system, underwent expansion to become general 
German institutions. Without any sacrifice, 
Prussia was able to make to the Empire a free gift 
of her navy and her postal service, and to arrange 
for much of the imperial business to be conducted 
by her own officials; for in truth the Prussian 
State had conducted three victorious campaigns, 
not in order immediately thereafter to subject 
herself to a newly created imperial authority, but 
in order to maintain and enlarge her own dominion, 
to take into her own hands the imperial hegemony, 
with the co-operation of the smaller allied states. 
The result is that Prussia, however carefully 
the wording of the Constitution may conceal the 
fact, occupies in reality and in law a position alto- 
gether different from that occupied by the other 
countries of the Empire. The Prussian State 
alone has remained a true state. Prussia alone 
cannot be constrained by executive decree to the 
fulfilment of her imperial duties, for in the hands 
of the Emperor rests the enforcement of such a 
decree — and the Emperor is King of Prussia. The 
entire imperial policy reposes upon the tacit 
assumption that there cannot possibly exist a 
permanent conflict between the will of the Empire 
and the will of the Prussian State. In matters of 
subordinate importance, the dominant state may 
display a yielding disposition; it does, indeed, 
exhibit such a disposition to a high degree, and this 
even in cases where the Prussian view is unques- 



296 Our Empire 

tionably the right one — witness, for example, the 
absurd imperial law in accordance with which 
the seat of the imperial court of law is placed else- 
where than in the capital city of the Empire. But 
in all matters of decisive importance Prussia has 
the determining voice, and the good sense of the 
nation has long recognized that this new order of 
things corresponds to the distribution of power 
and is in accordance with the dictates of simple 
justice. Of all the countries of the Empire, Prussia 
alone retains the right of taking up arms, for the 
King of Prussia is also, as Emperor, the War-Lord 
of the Empire. The Prussian State alone cannot 
be deprived against its will of the prerogatives with 
which it is endowed by the Imperial Constitution, 
for Prussia possesses seventeen votes in the Federal 
Council, and these suffice to safeguard it in this 
respect. Thus from the historical point of view 
the German Empire is the Prussian-German 
Unified State, with the accessory countries as- 
sociated with Prussia as federal companions. 

The necessary and valuable hegemony of the 
Prussian State is, however, exercised under forms 
which carefully safeguard the legitimate self- 
respect of our princes and peoples. It is by the 
nature of things, even more than in virtue of 
the deliberate intentions of statesmen, that the 
German State has been re-conducted into the 
channels of the old imperial law. All that was 
just and wise in the institutions of the Holy 
Empire is revived under our own eyes in new forms. 



Our Empire 297 

Our Imperial Constitution is at once old and young ; 
it has revivified the ancient and unforgotten politi- 
cal traditions of our race in so far as these were 
adapted to the tendencies and needs of our day. 
It is for this reason that within so short a time the 
people has given its full confidence to the new order. 
Those only who have grasped the interconnection 
between the old elements and the new will under- 
stand the political character of the new Empire, 
which presents as united an aspect among the 
community of modern states as was ever presented 
by the Empire of old. 

Now, as of old, the great names, Emperor and 
Empire, exercise their charm upon the German 
spirit, and this above all in those Franconian and 
Suabian regions which were so long altogether 
hostile to the Prussian State, and which only 
through their firmly established sense of imperial 
loyalty have been enabled to regain an understand- 
ing of the creative energies of this new epoch 
in our history. The honour thus paid to the 
imperial name is no empty sport of the popular 
imagination. On the ever-memorable day of 
Versailles, King William expressly stated that it 
was his determination to re-establish the imperial 
dignity which had been in abeyance for sixty years, 
to resume the crown of Charlemagne and the 
old single-headed eagle. The imperial dignity of 
the Hohenzollern is the most ancient and most 
venerable in all the world. In the course of 
centuries many changes have occurred in the 



298 Our Empire 

boundaries of Germany ; within quite recent times 
considerable losses were suffered in the South-East, 
whilst compensatory expansion occurred in Alsace- 
Lorraine, Schleswig-Holstein, Old Prussia, and 
Posen. Nevertheless, in the political sense, though 
not in the strictly legal sense, this New Empire is 
the successor of the Old; herein has the National 
State of the Germans found its new expression. 

Anything is possible to the German doctrinaire. 
In the days when the imperial authority had be- 
come a mere shadow, and when Frederick the Great, 
with clear insight, described the fallen Empire as 
the Illustrious Republic of the German Princes, 
many of the expounders of German imperial 
law were continuing to speak of the monarchical 
authority of the successor of Charlemagne. Simi- 
larly, to-day, we are assured from many professorial 
chairs that the German Empire is a Republic of 
States, although every sober student of political 
reahty must recognize at the first glance that the 
imperial dominion inseparably associated with the 
Prussian crown is by far the most powerful mon- 
archical authority of Western Europe. Can any 
one assert that the crown of England, Sweden, 
Italy, or Belgium is more powerful than our im- 
perial rule ? No one is better acquainted with the 
facts than the members of that rude Party which 
considers only the realities of power, for in the 
inflammatory writings of the Anarchists there 
is a perpetual recurrence of the complaint that 
the German crown is the most strongly estab- 



Our Empire 299 

lished of all. The Emperor rules by God's will, 
in virtue of inherent right ; he is not a delegate 
of the Federal Council, nor yet a responsible 
official. He is in command of the finest army in 
the world, for that military independence which 
attaches in time of peace to the crown of Bavaria 
is altogether devoid of political significance; and 
although the fusion of the four German officers' 
corps to form a single body, like numerous other 
simplifications, still remains a desideratum, the 
German army, in organization, training, and above 
all in its morale, is, to say the least of it, as sym- 
metrical and as firmly united as are the armies of 
the other Great Powers. The Emperor represents 
the Empire in all foreign relations, and in the 
language of diplomacy he is styled Empereur d' 
Allemagne; through him alone does the political 
will of Germany find expression in the community 
of nations, and such expression that the right of the 
German Princes to an independent representation 
at foreign Courts has become no more than a sort 
of harmless play-acting. He summons and dis- 
misses the Federal Council as he opens and closes 
the Reichstag. He possesses, not by law but by 
the nature of things, the right of initiative, for all 
legislative proposals of the Federal Council are 
entrusted to the Emperor for execution. He 
speaks to the Reichstag, not simply in the name of 
the Federal Council, but, if he thinks fit, person- 
ally as well ; no opposition to the imperial represen- 
tative has ever manifested itself in the Federal 



300 Our Empire 

Council, for our Princes have felt that no expres- 
sion of their personal opinion should impinge upon 
the living incorporation of imperial authority. 
The Emperor possesses the power of veto in a few 
cases which are expressly detailed in the Constitu- 
tion, and is entitled to suspend the application of 
an imperial law in those cases only in which he 
doubts its formal validity; thus it may sometimes 
happen that he will have to promulgate a law of 
which he disapproves, but owing to the preponder- 
ant power of Prussia this will far more rarely 
happen in Germany than in most constitutional 
monarchies. The Emperor is the director of the 
whole imperial policy ; he supervises the execution of 
the imperial laws, and although he is not invested, 
as was formerly the Roman Emperor, with the 
supreme judicial authority, his power has been 
so long and so firmly established that important 
controverted questions in the common law of the 
individual states, such as the question of the 
Brunswick trade, may in the last resort be decided 
by the Emperor alone. 

The two weaknesses which led to the destruction 
of the old German monarchy have been completely 
removed in the constitution of the New Empire. 
Although the Emperor does not personally receive 
a Civil List from the Empire, he is, as head of the 
Executive, furnished with sufficient financial and 
military powers. The Old Empire was the na- 
tional monarchy in process of dissolution, whereas 
the New Empire is the national monarchy in 



Our Empire 301 

process of evolution. The new imperialism has 
renounced the theocratic claim to worid-dominion 
which was made by the Holy Roman Empire, but 
in the actual world of every day it has established 
more firmly than ever the monarchical powers 
that attached to the old imperial rule. In a mon- 
archy the will of the state finds direct expression 
in the determinations of an independent Head of 
the Executive, whereas in a Republic it finds 
expression as the outcome of the struggles of 
parties and of the estates of the realm. An appli- 
cation of these considerations to modem German 
conditions renders incontestable the monarchical 
character of the German Empire. Every fresh 
political task imposed upon our people by the pro- 
gress of history inevitably strengthens the mon- 
archical authority of our Emperor. Our colonies 
are acquired and protected by **His Majesty's 
ships," by a portion of the national armed force 
which is under the direct command of the Emperor; 
and for a long time to come the political destinies 
of these daughter-lands will be decided by imperial 
letters and decrees in whose authorship the Federal 
Council will have very little to say. 

Now, as of old, the imperial dominion owes some 
of the consideration that it receives to the prestige 
of its own House. Not now, as in former days, 
is Prussia, as a heritage of the House of Hapsburg, 
estranged from the national life, and liberated from 
the principal responsibilities of imperial rule; 
it is German through and through, bearing all the 



302 Our Empire 

burdens of Empire, and so richly endowed with 
state-constructive energies that the Imperial Con- 
stitution took bodily from Prussia several of its 
most important institutions, and recent Prussian 
history appears in many respects, though not 
in all, as the precursor of the New Empire. At the 
South German Courts, the inchoate character of 
the Austrian hereditary dominion aroused at one 
time justifiable suspicion; but the Prussian State 
has, since the acquirements of the year 1866, 
become so powerful, and has through the instru- 
mentality of the imperial throne become so firmly 
allied with the smaller lands of the Empire, that it 
would be a false policy for Prussia to desire any 
extension of its own boundaries at the expense 
of its federal allies. Confidence in the justice 
and moderation of the imperial policy is a firm 
bond of imperial unity. It would be folly to for- 
feit this confidence in a possibly fallacious hope of 
a better adjustment of the Prussian boundary. 
Consequently it was without regret that the 
complete reunion of the old Guelph lands which re- 
cently seemed so easy of attainment was renounced. 
The prestige of the Imperial House is great enough 
to effect by its own unaided powers many impor- 
tant national tasks. The Prussian State is 
competent to effect by itself the indispensable safe- 
guarding of German rule on the eastern frontier. 
Being thus supported by the prestige of the Impe- 
rial House, the Imperial Rule has ever two strings 
to its bow; by circuitous paths, and with the aid 



Our Empire 303 

of the Prussian legislative chamber, it is in a posi- 
tion to gain ends which are unattainable by the 
imperial route. When the brilliant plan for an 
imperial system of railways broke down, the great 
Prussian system of state railways immediately 
came into being. Sooner or later the history of the 
Zollverein (Customs Union) will certainly be 
repeated, and in one way or another the Prussian 
railway system will reach out to impose a firmer 
and more harmonious order upon all the railways 
of Germany. 

As with the Imperial Dominion, so also has the 
anciently grounded esteem for the Imperial 
Chancellorship been reawakened among the Ger- 
mans — chiefly by the simple power of history, and 
not by any deliberate purpose. In the Constitu- 
tion of the North German Federation it was pro- 
posed that the office of Chancellor should be held 
as an accessory function by the first Prussian 
plenipotentiary in the Federation, but the Reichs- 
tag demanded the appointment of a responsible 
representative of the federal policy, and inasmuch 
as this constitutional responsibility was imposed 
upon the Chancellor alone, his office acquired at the 
outset an independent importance which no one 
had foreseen. Out of this office has proceeded 
the entire organism of our imperial officialdom. 
In the New Empire, just as in the Old, the position 
of the Chancellor is a duplex one : he is at the same 
time the Chief Adviser of the Emperor and the 
President of the Bundesrath (the Assembly of the 



304 Our Empire 

Estates of the Empire). Now, the Elector of 
Mainz was the chief of the Imperial Princes, and 
as such was the natural representative of a federal 
princely policy which was often sharply opposed 
to the views of the Emperor, and from the time 
when the imperial prestige more and more declined 
his office of chief Imperial Councillor remained 
to him merely as a name. The present Imperial 
Chancellor, on the other hand, owing to the more 
firmly monarchical constitution of the New Em- 
pire, is merely an official directly appointed by the 
Emperor; he can have no other will than that of 
the monarch, and is unable to conduct the pro- 
ceedings of the Bundesrath in any other sense 
than that desired by his imperial master. He has 
also a third duty, unknown to the Imperial Chan- 
cellor of the ancient empire. The latter represented 
his own country, but the Imperial Chancellor to- 
day represents in the Bundesrath the heritage of 
the Emperor, and in order to fulfil this duty he 
must either himself preside over the Prussian 
Cabinet, or must at least exercise a decisive 
influence upon the internal policy of Prussia. It 
is owing to the union of these three distinct func- 
tions that the office of Imperial Chancellor has 
acquired its peculiarly exalted value. Everyone 
feels it to be an office precisely fitted for a states- 
man of genius, and in the future too it can be 
adequately filled only by men of note. But if the 
little Republic of the Netherlands was able during 
two centuries, from the days of Oldenbarne veldt 



Our Empire 305 

to those of Van de Spiegel, to find men of out- 
standing talent to act as Chancellor, our great land 
of Germany may confidently expect to do the like. 

Like the imperial dominion and the imperial 
chancellorship, the Bundesrath is also firmly rooted 
in the history of the nation. As is well known, the 
Bundesrath is the plenum or general assembly of 
the Frankfort Bundestag, and this again was the 
rump of the Ratisbon Reichstag. In the Bun- 
desrath, the ancient representation of this estate of 
the realm is renewed, for here finds expression, not 
merely the political will of the countries of the 
Empire, but also the personal will of the Imperial 
Princes. For three decisive reasons the activity of 
this body, formerly so quarrelsome and ineffective, 
has become radically transformed and improved. 
The preponderant power of the one leading coun- 
try which has no rivals to reckon with gives to its 
deliberations force and definiteness. By an ad- 
mirable legal provision, the negligent are punished 
simply by a deprivation of their vote, so that the 
old-time neglect of plain duty has been rendered 
impossible. Above all, the serious character of 
the matters under discussion is an absolute barrier 
to the occurrence of the empty formal quarrels of 
the Frankfort and Ratisbon days. The Imperial 
Princes are compelled to choose as their repre- 
sentatives diligent and upright men. 

The Bundesrath is endowed with some, but not 
with all, of the prerogatives of an imperial govern- 
ment; it is at the same time our House of States 



3o6 Our Empire 

(Staatenhaus) , and as Council of State must utilize 
the best powers of German officialdom in drafting 
the imperial laws. In the exercise of this threefold 
activity it has hitherto exceeded all expectation. 
At the outset, everyone believed that in the repre- 
sentation of the estates of the realm there would 
be manifested a predominant tendency towards 
separatism, justified and unjustified. These ex- 
pectations were not fulfilled. Twice within a few 
years has the Estate of the German Princes hap- 
pily disappointed the nation's anticipations. The 
very states which had so long and so fiercely re- 
sisted the Prussian customs system honourably 
fulfilled their new duties as soon as they had en- 
tered the Prusso-German Zollverein. Those little 
principalities, which had formerly taken up arms 
against Prussian rule, displayed to-day, after the 
decisive victory of Prussia, a German fidelity to the 
Empire. ''What is given to the Empire is taken 
from our freedom" — this detestable principle, 
which in the Old Empire dominated the policy of 
all the estates of the realm, is no longer regarded as 
applicable. In the imperial authority the govern- 
ments of the federated countries see, in accordance 
with their duty to the Fatherland, and with the 
spirit of the Imperial Constitution, not a foreign 
and hostile authority, but the authority of the 
common national state, which safeguards their 
own existence and in whose decisions they play an 
effective part. Open treason is altogether im- 
possible for the holders of little thrones which no 



Our Empire 307 

longer possess military independence ; quarrels and 
intrigues will only do harm to the discontented; 
he alone who renders unto the Empire the things 
that are the Empire's can expect from the imperial 
authority a benevolent attention to his interests. 
In the days of the North German Confed ration, 
and during the first years of the New Empire, 
there might be doubt about the sentiments that 
prevailed at many of the smaller Courts; but so 
general a community of interests has now become 
established that it may be asserted that a reason- 
able separatism is only possible on the basis of 
fidelity to the Empire. Even an ultramontane 
government in Bavaria — if such a misfortune could 
arise — would now hardly be in a position to defy 
the imperial authority. If it wished to make any 
advance towards the fulfilment of the plans of the 
party dominant in Bavaria it would first have to 
endeavour, by good service, to make itself indis- 
pensable to the Empire. The many-headedness of 
the Bundesrath has delayed numerous reforms 
and has proved a complete obstacle to some, 
but party differences have never manifested them- 
selves within this body. Although it seemed an 
obvious and dangerous possibility that the Govern- 
ment, outvoted in the Bundesrath, should combine 
with the parties in the Reichstag against the 
majority in the Bundesrath, yet, with isolated 
exceptions, the idea of this has always been dis- 
dainfully rejected. As a rule, the struggle of 
interests in the Bundesrath is fought out quietly 



3o8 Our Empire 

and in a friendly spirit, and as soon as a decision 
has been arrived at the Government approaches 
the Reichstag with a united front. The govern- 
ments of the individual members of the federation 
often find themselves quite unable to satisfy the 
increasing demands of modern social life, and are 
forced in their own interest to favour an increase 
in the imperial authority. The first proposal 
to enlarge the federal power was made by the 
Kingdom of Saxony in the days of the North Ger- 
man Federation, although Saxony a few years 
earlier had been one of the most ardent opponents 
of Prussian federal reform. But now, owing to 
the rapid development of the commerce of Saxony, 
this country felt the need of a supreme tribunal of 
commerce. Moreover, without the protection of 
the Empire, this little kingdom would find itself 
unable permanently to restrain the power of the 
social democracy ; similarly, the Bundesrath had to 
give its assent to the new imperial taxes, for an 
economic balance between the individual countries 
of the federation could be maintained no other 
way. 

Twenty years are a brief period in the life of 
nations, but the last two decades have been 
extraordinarily fruitful in great experiences, justi- 
fying the hope that with the remedial memento mori 
of the year 1866 a new and better epoch began in 
the changeful history of the German Princely 
Estate. These great houses often sinned greatly 
by their resistance to the imperial dominion of the 



Our Empire 309 

Middle Ages, but they were the founders of the 
States and the towns of the German nation, and 
in the centuries of the reHgious wars they proved 
themselves the saviours of German civilization. 
Then the Greek gift of the Napoleonic sovereignty 
clouded their minds, with so dangerous an ulti- 
mate effect that in the later years of the German 
Bund there loomed ever nearer the possibility of 
a general mediatization. The German dynasties 
have good reasons to bless the memory of the 
catastrophe of 1 866. In the great crises of national 
life war is always a milder remedy than revolution, 
for it safeguards fidelity, and its ivssue appears as a 
judgment of God. Very rarely indeed has any 
great historical transformation been effected with 
so much moderation, and with so trifling an injury 
to the sense of justice. The victor in the struggle 
was content with the annihilation of one of the 
most culpable of the smaller states, and the an- 
nexation of this North German area was so fully 
justified by its results that everyone, with infini- 
tesimal exceptions, came to recognize its necessity. 
The rescued dynasties now find themselves in a 
more fortunate situation than formerly under the 
German Bund. It is true that they have lost their 
independent sovereignty, but this high-sounding 
name was a curse for the minor principalities 
themselves; they had no power whatever to con- 
duct an independent European policy, and their 
military independence was misused for foreign 
ends by powerful neighbours like France and Aus- 



310 Our Empire 

tria. In place of this they now possess a legally 
restricted but effective share in the decisions of 
the German Empire, the first of the great Powers 
of Europe. Whereas since the Seven Years* 
War they had perforce continually trembled for 
their existence, they now enjoy a security never 
known before. Any Prince of the Empire who 
fulfils his duty to the community can reckon upon 
unconditional protection and support. It is the 
Empire which imposes upon the people the duty of 
military service and the heavy burdens of taxation. 
The prince retains all those prerogatives which 
bring popular favour; under his guardianship is 
all that renders life beautiful and secure ; he appears 
as the public benefactor in the exercise of that 
peaceful civilizing activity which has ever been the 
stronger side of German separatism. On well- 
considered grounds the Empire has avoided any 
interference with the right of the smaller Courts to 
confer titles and honours, however ridiculous it 
may seem that we should still speak officially 
of a ''Bavarian Empire. " Despite the loss of its 
sovereign powers, the German Estate of Princes 
still remains the loftiest nobility in the world; its 
sons occupy nearly all the thrones of Europe; all 
the world over, the usage of the royal Courts is in 
accordance with the German princely customs. 
In this distinguished circle the Emperor moves, 
not as of old endowed with the dignity of a feudal 
suzerain, but in the modest function of primus inter 
pares. The profound reverence which was awak- 



Our Empire 311 

ened by the old imperial dignity even in the~days 
of its decline can no longer be claimed for its mod- 
ern representative. New offices must win vital 
force from the personality of their actual holders, 
and it is a fortunate fact that the first Emperor 
of the New Empire is regarded by everyone as 
the leader of the German nobility. All pay willing 
reverence to the dignified figure of the victor of 
Sedan; the Emperor William has understood how 
to inspire fidelity to the imperial person in the 
hearts alike of the princes and of the people, and 
the benefits of his success in this respect will accrue 
to his descendants. The army, too, is a priceless 
bond of national unity among the members of the 
Estate of Princes. Foreign military service can 
nowadays hardly act as a lure to the German 
Princes ; for all of them it has become the custom to 
take service in the imperial army. No one can fail 
to recognize that under the new conditions the 
Estate of Princes has shown itself more sagacious 
and more adaptable than a large proportion of the 
bourgeoisie. Hence many Conservative supporters 
of the smaller dynasties, who were formerly Pan- 
German or Separatist opponents of Prussia, have 
now entered the ranks of the Middle Parties that 
were born from the Frankfort Imperial Party. 
The Old Imperial Party had at one time a Radical 
aspect, because under the Bundestag the peaceful 
realization of its ideas was impossible — it desired a 
secure national order in place of the anarchy of the 
German Bund. Now that this new order has come 



312 Our Empire 

into existence it is only natural that many of the 
sometime Prussian Centralists and of the some- 
time Separatist Conservatives should have entered 
upon an honourable understanding. 

Among the great institutions of the Imperial 
Law the only absolutely new thing is the Reichstag, 
the Lower House, whose lack was formerly a source 
of much distress to Justus Moser, and this is un- 
fortunately the institution whose value is least 
assured. The Bundesrath, primarily destined to 
safeguard the territorial interests, gives a firm 
and single-minded support to the imperial policy; 
the Reichstag, on the other hand, which represents 
the united nation, has for the last ten years almost 
invariably exercised an obstructive and disturb- 
ing influence. This experience contradicts all the 
anticipations of political theorists and all the ex- 
pectations of the political parties. When the 
North German Confederation was founded, all 
the world believed — Bismarck himself believed — 
it to be indisputable that Parliament would 
increasingly manifest a centralizing tendency, 
and this perhaps to an excessive degree. But if 
to-day we cast a dispassionate glance backwards 
we cannot fail to wonder at ourselves, and to 
ask how we could possibly have indulged in such 
groundless speculations. The Reichstag is the 
product of universal suffrage ; but in Germany as 
in Italy, the most ardent advocates of national 
unity are always and exclusively to be found 
among the cultured classes. The mass of the people 



Our Empire 313 

have a warm enough sentiment for Germany to 
prove themselves in time of need to be heroic 
defenders of the Fatherland; but in the course of 
everyday life they are far less concerned about 
the great questions of national policy than about 
various local, social, and ecclesiastical interests, 
and there are no indications that would lead us to 
expect that this naive separatist disposition of 
the masses will undergo any sudden alteration. 
So long as the powerful impressions produced by 
the German and French wars were still operative, 
and so long as the need still persisted for the 
legislative realization of the programme of eco- 
nomic freedom long prepared and advocated by 
the Liberals, there was always to be found a trust- 
worthy majority to work hand in hand with the 
Bundesrath. Since then, however, a new page 
has been turned. An embittered opposition, 
strangely compounded of Radical and clerical ele- 
ments which are unified only by their common 
hatred of the Imperial Government, hinders, with 
the aid of declared foreign enemies, the continuous 
development of the Imperial Constitution, dis- 
honours the Reichstag by the idle quarrels of the 
factions, and reduces all the proceedings of Parlia- 
ment to the level of an incalculable game of hazard. 
In the course of the centuries, German Separa- 
tism has often changed its colours and its device. 
During the Middle Ages, Germany was weakened 
above all by the mutual hostility of the Estates of 
the Realm; for the last two centuries the chief 



314 Our Empire 

source of trouble has been the jealousy of the 
dynasties ; to-day we suffer from the separatism of 
the parties, perhaps a more dangerous enemy to 
national unity than were the old separatist tend- 
encies of the Estates and of the Dynasties. In the 
Reichstag the thought of the Fatherland often 
disappears altogether amid the vanities, the 
quarrels, the graspingness, the innumerable minor 
self-interests of party life. The one separatist 
attack hitherto ventured upon the Imperial 
Constitution proceeded from the Reichstag and 
not from the Bundesrath — I refer to the celebrated 
Franckenstein proposal. Against the manifest 
intention of the Constitution the Reichstag made 
permanent the provisional remissions of the pro- 
portional contributions. The most unfortunate 
feature of this affair was not the measure itself (for 
its consequences have in practice proved far less 
deleterious than was hoped by its sagacious 
originators), but the resulting intense confusion 
of parties. The faithful adherents of imperial 
unity were forced to vote for the separatist pro- 
posal, for otherwise the malignity of the factions 
would have rendered impossible the indispensable 
increase in the imperial revenue. For as long as 
it was able, the Reichstag obstructed the extension 
promised in the Constitution of the imperial cus- 
toms system throughout the entire German area. 
The entry of the Hansa towns into the Customs 
Union was ultimately effected without the Reichs- 
tag and despite the Reichstag, because the 



Our Empire 315 

Senate of Hamburg and Bremen perceived at the 
eleventh hour that a majority in the Reichstag 
united only for obstructive purposes could give 
no firm support against the will of the Emperor 
and of the Bundesrath. It necessarily resulted 
that measures essential to the national safety could 
often be forced through the Reichstag only by a 
threatening movement among the people. Such 
was the case of the adoption of the Septennate 
for the peace-effectives of the imperial army ; such 
the grudging vote of funds for the transatlantic 
steamship service and for the foundations of our 
colonial policy. To the masses all these questions 
seemed simple; their answer appeared self-evident. 
The national discontent displayed itself so vigor- 
ously that some of the members of the Opposition 
began to tremble for their seats, and ceased an 
obstruction that had not been based upon any 
principle whatever, for its sole aim had been to 
throw difficulties in the path of the detested 
Imperial Chancellor. 

Thus the repute of the Reichstag has been 
lowered by its own faults. From year to year its 
proceedings have become vainer and more diffuse. 
The logical and effective deliberations of the best 
Parliament we have ever had, the constituent or 
constitution-building Reichstag of the North 
German Federation, occupy no more than a single 
thin volume; to-day two ponderous tomes bare- 
ly suffice to contain the verbiage of an almost 
fruitless parliamentary session. Many men still 



3i6 Our Empire 

actively interested in political life now attend to 
parliamentary debates on those occasions only 
when Prince Bismarck makes a speech. 

For a long time far-sighted patriots have been 
asking whether our present Reichstag might not be 
replaced by a more competent and harmonious 
assembly. Gustav Riimelin, for instance, has sug- 
gested the constitution of a smaller Parliament, con- 
sisting of members elected by the various Diets. 
But all such schemes of reform are premature. 
The brief history of the New Empire has been so 
rich in surprises that we must not hastily abandon 
our hope that the Reichstag may once more attain 
to the level of its earliest and best years. As long 
as the evils are not unbearable it is impossible for 
the Imperial Government to take the desperate 
step of abolishing universal suffrage, the sacred non 
plus ultra of modern democracy. Such a step 
would entail the danger of unchaining a Radical 
movement which might do more harm than the 
roughnesses of our present electoral struggles. 
Unfortunately it is somewhat improbable that 
there will be formed in our Reichstag a permanent 
and unanimous majority faithfully attached to the 
Empire. Strong forces of implacable opposition 
are unquestionably manifest in the people. A 
powerful ultramontane party will long continue 
to exist, even if the relations between the State 
and the Church should become more friendly 
than they are at present. The clericals cannot 
forget how firmly associated with the Reformation 



Our Empire 317 

is the history of Prussia; the extremists among 
them continue to hope, if tacitly, that the re- 
entrance of Austria may some day secure for them 
in the New Empire the preponderance which 
they once held in the Old. Socialist-Radicalism, 
too, will not soon disappear, for it is unavoidable in 
a century of profound economic transformations. 
Moreover, the party of the fault-finders and of 
those who always know better than anyone else 
strikes deep roots in the less amiable character- 
istics of the German temperament, and in the 
over-cultured life of the great towns, remote from 
a healthy contact with nature. So long as the 
odoriferous waters of the Panke continue to flow 
through Berlin, so long also will the water-lily of 
the Spirit of Progress thrive upon its green slime! 
With their natural friends, the Poles, the Danes, 
and the French, these Radical factions will, in the 
near future, continue to appear in the Reichstag; 
and since every incisive imperial law necessarily 
touches powerful social interests, it inevitably 
follows that individual economic groups, such 
as those of the liquor-traders, the tobacconists, 
and the bankers, will, as circumstances may 
dictate, combine with the Radicals and their as- 
sociates for the common purposes of obstruction. 

The position of the parties faithful to the Empire 
is a difficult one, for they are divided by their his- 
tory, by their class-consciousness, and by numerous 
contrasts of origin and economic position. The 
Conservatives derive their chief support from the 



31 S Our Empire 

great landed proprietors of the North and the East, 
and unless they undergo a radical change of char- 
acter they will never draw much of their power 
from the South and from the West, for in these 
regions the structure of parties is almost every- 
where determined by the struggle between the 
Ultramontanes and the Liberals. To these diffi- 
culties we have to add the general lack of under- 
standing exhibited by the masses in the matter of 
imperial poHcy. In the year 1848, the Prussians 
elected almost simultaneously the deputies for the 
Parliaments of Frankfort and of BerHn. Prussian 
questions lay nearer to the hearts of the electors, 
and they therefore sent to Berlin the most cele- 
brated spouters of the day; for Frankfort there 
were left only the Vormdrzlichen, the men of the 
days before the Revolution of March, the experi- 
enced men of the despised earlier time. The result 
was that numerous constituencies were represented 
in Frankfort by a man of sense, and in Berlin by 
an empty-headed chatterbox. Even to-day, in 
many electoral districts, a similar thing occurs, 
with the roles reversed. For the local diet, whose 
proceedings directly concern the interests of the 
average elector, he will choose a landed proprietor 
or townsman of position well fitted for the work 
he has to do, whereas in the Reichstag he is satis- 
fied to be represented by any carpet-bagger who 
may present himself with the recommendation of a 
powerful party. During the next few years the 
Reichstag will inevitably suffer from the confusion 



Our Empire 319 

of party struggles, and we must rest content so 
long as the difficulties it throws in the way of 
imperial policy do not become excessive, and so 
long as it ultimately accepts indispensable reforms 
after many battles and much compromise. 

In the constitution of the New Empire the ideas 
Kaiser and Reich are more broadly and nobly 
conceived than of old, and the nation is granted 
the right of effective co-operation in the formu- 
lation of the imperial laws. But the new Lower 
House has hitherto shown little tendency to rise 
to the greatness of its opportunities; the motive 
force of imperial policy is found chiefly in the 
strength of the imperial rule and in the unanimity 
of the Bundesrath. Those who deal with actuali- 
ties and those who earnestly desire a more united 
Empire must perforce to-day be strongly mon- 
archical in sentiment. Of all political evils that 
might be visited upon us the greatest would 
unquestionably be a weak Imperial Government, 
one which should hold parley with the parliamen- 
tary theories of the day, and which, not being sup- 
ported by a majority in the Reichstag, should 
timorously yield ground to its opponents in that 
body. A necessary element of such a monarchical 
sentiment is a respect for the legally established 
territorial possessions of the Princes of the Empire. 
It is true that most of these owe their rescue 
from the disasters attendant upon petty insigni- 
ficance, by no means to their vital energies, 
but to the general torces of historical development, 



320 Our Empire 

or even to the working of blind chance; if the 
nation has survived the destruction of such re- 
nowned territories as the Electorates of the Palati- 
nate, Hesse, and Hanover, it could also bear the 
annihilation of Baden or Darmstadt. Moreover, 
the ancient sins of the life of little states, Philis- 
tinism, narrow-mindedness, and nepotism, still 
flourish luxuriantly, and their influence is all the 
more deleterious because they foster that spirit of 
pettiness by which, since the miseries of the Thirty 
Years' War, the German temperament, though by 
nature inclined towards greatness, has been cor- 
rupted and falsified. But for the moment, at least, 
these sins no longer threaten the safety of the 
Empire. Only by the undermining of the mutual 
confidence that now exists between the head of 
the Empire and the Princes of the Empire could 
this safety be endangered; and since the question 
to which territorial dominion this or that fragment 
of land properly belongs is one that no longer 
presses amid the larger issues of to-day, it has 
become a patriotic duty to avoid all disturbance 
of the existing territorial distribution. Despite 
the remarkable and often irrational configura- 
tion of its internal boundaries, the Empire has 
long exhibited, within no less than without, the 
magnificent vital energy of a Great Power. 

The existence of a recognized national monarchy 
is a matter of enormous importance, involving 
consequences far greater than is generally under- 
stood by our people. Everywhere the influence of 



Our Empire 321 

the monarchy makes for peace, for it imposes insu- 
perable obstacles to ambition. Since the German 
Empire has become an admitted fact, since there 
has no longer been any dispute about the greatest 
of all the problems of German power, our whole 
political life has been steadied in a manner hitherto 
unknown, and this to such an extent that even the 
youthful violence of our party struggle has involved 
no serious danger. Throughout the Empire the 
respect for authority has been enormously en- 
hanced by the quiet strength of the Imperial Rule 
and by the firm monarchical ordering of Prussia. 
Under the German Bund how much filth and 
poison was scattered abroad apropos of every mis- 
fortune of any of the Princely Houses; what storms 
were raised by the abdication of Louis I of Bavaria. 
In our own day Bavaria has had to suffer the rule of 
two insane kings, and this unexampled misfortune 
caused far less disturbance, because Bavaria is now 
no more than a segment of the Empire, and every- 
one is well aware that in the Empire the elements of 
public order are perfectly secure. 

In the history of the Zollverein, the valuable 
preliminary school of our imperial policy, Prussia 
learned that the Princes of the Bund were extremely 
loath to suffer any interference in matters of do- 
mestic administration, but that they almost always 
willingly accepted and honourably executed unified 
laws applicable to all alike. This experience has 
never been forgotten. By our national customs, no 
less than by the historical character of the German 



322 Our Empire 

State, the German Empire has, moreover, been com- 
pelled to undertake many-sided social activities, 
but it was recognized that the creation of a strong 
force of imperial officials beside and above the 
already existing and numerous local state officials 
would necessarily lead to considerable friction. For 
this reason the imperial authority assumed direct 
responsibility for a few branches only of adminis- 
tration. Its chief activities were devoted to the 
work of legislation, the execution of the laws being 
for the most part left to the local governments 
under imperial supervision. In this way the sensi- 
bilities of the local governments were spared, 
and at the same time the aims of unification were 
more securely attained, for in Germany confidence 
always bears good fruit. Even in the adminis- 
tration of our strongly centralized coinage system 
this principle has been observed. The Empire has 
no mints of its own, leaving the mints of the local 
governments to do their own work in the "mperial 
interest. Consequently, the mass of the people 
have very little understanding of the effective power 
of the Empire ; the number of the imperial officials 
is comparatively small, and in daily life the 
German comes in contact with local officials almost 
exclusively. Yet the life of the masses has been 
completely transformed by the right of domicile, 
by the liberty of occupation, by the obligation to 
military service; it is the laws of the Empire 
that have given rise to that profound alteration 
of social conditions which is manifest to all. If, 



I 



Our Empire 323 

in addition, we take into account the newly effected 
unification of the criminal and civil law, of the 
methods of intercourse, of the coinage, and of 
weights and measures, we see that the general 
outcome, despite all parliamentary hindrances and 
all errors of detail, has been an extraordinarily fruit- 
ful and beneficent system of legislation . This alone 
suffices to prove that our Empire is no mere federal 
state, but a stronger and more coherent form of 
national unity — that it is a monarchy with federal 
institutions. 

To the sense of social justice, to the still persist- 
ent traditions of the Prussian Kingdom (ever a 
kingdom of the indigent), do we owe it that our 
Empire is now engaged in freeing the working 
classes from the greatest of the curses of poverty, the 
terrible insecurity of their lives, and in tempering 
to some extent the hardships of the system of free 
competition. When Napoleon III expressed the 
intention of insuring working-class families against 
illness, accident, and death, by national enterprise, 
his bold proposition assumed a purely socialistic 
aspect, for in the France of those days the adoption 
of such measures must inevitably have led to a 
further strengthening of the already overwhelming 
powers of the bureaucracy. But Germany, in its 
honourable and hard-working officialdom, in its 
decentralized administration, and in its vigorous 
co-operative institutions, already possesses all the 
preliminary requisites for a sound system of social 
legislation. In our case it is possible to undertake 



324 Our Empire 

working-class insurance on such lines that, like 
every valuable social reform, it will not destroy 
but stimulate the independence of the individual 
citizen, giving an impulse towards the formation of 
new co-operative institutions adapted to the needs 
of the transformed economic life of the people. If 
further progress in this direction should carry out 
the promise of the vigorous beginnings already 
made, the social laws of the German Empire will 
serve as an example to the other nations of the 
civilized world. 

Full of defects and contradictions, the imperial 
constitution is manifestly in the opening stage 
merely of its development. It is at least essential 
that the imperial authority should be equipped 
with the power of veto, as the formal embodiment 
of the monarchical power with which it is in fact 
endowed. Even in army matters far too little has 
as yet been effected towards the practical unifica- 
tion of the nation. Just as already to-day, without 
any injury to Germany, Bavarian and Wiirttem- 
berger regiments garrison Metz and Strassburg, so 
also it could but redound to our advantage if the 
troops of Baden were sometimes quartered in 
Danzig, and those of Pomerania in Ulm. All our 
fortresses, save those of Ingolstadt and Germer- 
sheil, have long been imperial fortresses, and 
the last surviving reason for our idiotic family 
quarrels has been our defective knowledge of 
one another. But all such desiderata fade into 
insignificance beside the irrefutable need for a firm 



Our Empire 325 

interconnection of the finances of the Empire with 
those of its subordinate parts. Since the legend 
of the costHness of a system of Httle states — a 
legend which at one time gained general credence — 
was shown to be an illusion, and since the smaller 
countries of the Empire proved incompetent to 
shoulder the heavier financial burdens which every 
great state perforce imposes upon the sections of 
which it is made up, the Imperial Administration 
had to choose one of two paths. The smaller 
governments might have been left to their own 
devices, when the increasing demands of the central 
imperial authority would have involved them in 
bankruptcy and ultimate annihilation. In the 
early days of the North German Federation this 
possibility seemed imminent. But it soon became 
evident that the Imperial Constitution, and the 
obligations of good faith towards individual 
members of the federation, necessitated the adop- 
tion of another course. For years past it has been 
the aim of the Imperial Financial Administration to 
increase the imperial revenue to such an extent as 
to render it possible, not merely to abate the 
demands made by the Empire upon the local 
governments, but further, by imperial contributions 
made to these latter, to enable them to re-order 
their own finances, which had all been seriously 
affected by the increasing need of the Communes. 
If the Imperial Administration proves successful 
in this aim the local governments will all be united 
to the Empire by willingly accepted bonds, and an 



326 Our Empire 

anti-imperial separatism will become impossible at 
the smaller courts. Step by step great enterprises 
are resisted by the obstinacy of the pariiamentary 
factions. Even the Spirit Monopoly, a tax that 
would have been advantageous alike to the finances, 
the domestic economy, the health, and the morals 
of the nation, was rejected because the Moderate 
Parties, in their dread of a public opinion which did 
not in fact exist, and in their anxiety regarding 
the caprices of universal suffrage, made common 
cause with the enemies of the Empire. Ultimately, 
maybe, the general reasonableness of events, in con- 
junction with pressure of urgent need, will bring 
about the victory of the idea of imperial unity 
which dominates all such financial proposals. 

In its foreign policy the Empire displays a mode- 
ration never before exhibited by a great state after 
a brilliant victory. There has not appeared in 
Europe any goal for German conquest sufficiently 
alluring to warrant the undertaking of a great war. 
German statesmanship must for a long time to come 
be keenly watchful if we are to defend our glorious 
acquisitions against the unconcealed enmity of 
France and the increasing hostility of the Musco- 
vites. It may be, too, that a time will shortly arrive 
in which England will attempt, as of old in the 
days of Marlborough, to utilize her dynastic con- 
nections with the Court of Berlin in the further- 
ance of the aims of her commercial policy. But 
our Empire is too strong to permit itself to be 
terrorized or misused. If peace be preserved the 



Our Empire 327 

way lies open for an extension of our economic 
power. It is plain that the rigid protective system, 
which for the moment acts as a barrier between 
the various countries of Europe, is merely provi- 
sional. Industry is everywhere seeking new fields 
of enterprise; the Central European Zollverein, 
whose institution in the days of the Bundestag 
would have gravely endangered our national 
independence, no longer belongs to the realm of 
dreams. A customs union with Austria would 
serve, not merely to open new channels for our 
commerce, but also to give further political 
strength to our southern ally, who, despite her 
infirmities, remains indispensable to us — for the 
fall of the Danubian Empire would inevitably 
shake our own power. Similarly, a commercio- 
political understanding with Holland would re- 
dound to the advantage of both parties, for to us 
it would furnish free access to the mouths of our 
leading river, whilst for the Netherlands it would 
provide a military protection for her colonies, for 
whose defence her own sea-power is no longer 
adequate. As with all the truly national memories 
of our ancient imperial days, so also is renascent in 
the New Empire the sea-power of the Hanseatic 
League. The Hanseatic League had unceasingly 
to contend with the indifference and often with the 
overt hostility of the imperial authority. But 
to-day the Empire is taking into its own hand 
those duties of maritime policy which for three 
centuries have been neglected. Whereas the 



328 Our Empire 

Hanseatic League lost the command of the sea 
because its authority did not extend over a unified 
political area, we may hope to-day that the power 
of the Empire will suffice to secure for the Germans 
their fair share of dominion in the transatlantic 
world. 

Immeasurably great are the new political tasks 
which in the years since the unification of our land 
have been pressing for accomplishment. Germany 
will prove herself adequate to all of these if she 
preserves respect for her imperial system, if she 
cleaves firmly to that conception of monarchy in 
the free and deep understanding of which our 
people excels all the nations of the earth. 



INDEX 



Abdul-Mejid, 31 

Acropolis, 46 

Adrianople, 20, 87, 89 

Adriatic Sea, 35 

^gean Sea, 25 

Aivalu, 25 

Albert of Brandenburg, 247 

Alexander, Emperor, 8, 11, 67, 
75, 79, 86, 112 

Alexander I, 59 

Alexander II, 55 

Alexander of Macedon, 284 

Alexinatz, 79 

Algiers, 42 

Ali Pasha, 31, 38 

Alsace, 97, 98, 103, 104, 105, 
106, 108, 112, 117, 123, 124, 
128, 130, 131, 133, 134, 136, 
137, 139, 142, I43» 144, 146, 
149, 150, 152, 153, 156, 157, 
158, 160, 161, 164, 165, 166, 
168, 169, 171, 172, 174, 175, 
176, 177, 178, 180-199, 215 

Alsace-Lorraine, 298 

Altbreisach, 99, 100 

Alvensleben, 214 

America, 157 

Amsel, 22 

Anadoli Fanar, 17 

Andrassy, Count, 72, 81, 82, 84 

Anspach-Baireuth, 162, 171 

Arabia, 42 

Arelat, 115 

Aries, 116 

Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 98, 108, 
160, 175 

Asia, 17, 48, 56, 64, 65, 73 



Asia Minor, 13, 18, 25, 284 

Astrakhan, 57 

Athens, 46 

Augsburg, 128, 130 

Augsburg Confession, 269, 271, 
274 

Australia, 20 

Austria, 5, 20, 62, 67, 68, 69, 
70,71,73,83,85,87,88,105, 
131, 172, 203, 218, 228, 247, 
257, 270, 273, 275, 294, 309, 
310, 317, 327 



B 



Baden, 100, 112, 113, 122, 141, 

152, 153, 164, 165, 166, 172, 

174, 210, 320 
Bakunin, 29 
Ballon d'Alsace, 122 
Baltic, 224, 271, 273, 280 
Barbarossa, 126 
Bassompierre, 105 
Bavaria, 100, 131, 163, 165, 

166, 171, 172, 173, 174, 210, 

278, 299, 307, 321 
Belfort, 119, 162 
Belgium, 68, 121, 165, 298 
Belgrade, 46 
Belle Alliance, 225 
Berg, 123 
Bergen, 262 
Bergkirche, 124 
Berlin, 89, 90, 92, loi, 133, 

169, 170, 200, 225, 318, 326 
Berlin Convention, 81 
Bernard of Weimar, 280 
Bernhardi, 201 
Bcsika, Bay of, 81 



329 



330 



Index 



Bismarck, 68, 75, 85, 113, 189, 

215, 216, 312, 316 
Black Forest, no 
Black Sea, 5 
Blekingen, 264 
Blucher, 205 
Blue Mountain, 122 
Bodinus, 245 

Bogidarovic, Wesselitzky, 30 
Bohemia, 70, 270 
Boileau, 146 
Bonaparte, 102 
Bonn, 176 

Bosnia, 46, 47, 71, 80 
Bosphorus, 2, 8, 13, 18, 28, 47, 

59, 62, 67, 72, 81, 83, 85, 88 
Bourbons, 184 
Boussang, 118 
Boyen, 212 

Brandenburg, 214, 266, 272 
Brandt, Sebastian, 104, 125, 

127 
Breisgau, 122 
Breitenfeld, 276 
Bremen, 271, 315 
Britain, 262 
Brittany, 106 
Broussa, 51 
Brunnow, von, 44 
Brunswick, 272 
Brussels, 7 
Bucer, Martin, 128 
Bucharest, 46 
Buda, 21 
Budapest, 84 
Bulach, Zorn von, 147 
Bulgaria, 29, 47, 76, 80, 82 
Bunsen, 5 
Burgundy, 116 
Byzantium, 13, 17, 53, 55, 58, 

61,67 



Caesar, 115 
Canning, George, 43 
Capito, 128 

Caracalla, Baths of, 222 
Carlyle, Thomas, 203 
Carolina, 26 



Castlereagh, Lord, 166 

Catherine, 55, 79 

Caucasus, 47 

Cavour, 69, 78 

Cellarius, 243 

Champagne, 102 

Chanzy, 209 

Charlemagne, 297 

Charles V, 48, 116, 129, 276 

Charles IX, 264 

Charles the Bold, 127 

China, 66 

Cid, 28 

Cobden, Richard, 82 

Coblenz, 158 

Colmar, 125, 127, 153, 158 

Cologne, 126, 131, 158 

Columbus, 2 

Comneni, 93 

Cond6, loi 

Constantinople, 17, 50, 69, 82, 

88, 92 
Copenhagen, 59, 262 
Cordova, 27 
Cracow, 264 
Crimea, 57 
Crimean War, 3, 4, 38, 77, 83, 

92 
Cromwell, Oliver, 213 
Crotus Rubianus, 231 



D 



Dahlmann, 218 

Dalwigk, von, 172 

Dante, 244, 249 

Danube, 55, 70, 75, 87, 220 

Danzig, loi, 129, 134, 177 

Dardanelles, 47, 88 

Darmstadt, 320 

Decazes, 68 

Denmark, 78, 140, 264, 273, 

280 
Diebitsch, 20 

Diedenhofen, 117, 154, 172 
Disraeli, Benjamin, 17, 50, 82, 

83 
Dollfus, 142, 144 
Douai, 121 
Dringenberg, 127 



Index 



331 



Droysen, 201 
Drummond, Admiral, 81 
Dunkirk, 115 
Duruy, 156 



Egypt, 36, 42 

Eichmann, 4 

Elbe, 170, 271, 276, 283 

Elliot, Sir Henry, 49 

Engelsburg, 122 

England, 6, 8, 32, 51, 53, 63, 
64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 73, 78, 80, 
81, 82, 83, 90, 93, 112, 140, 
172, 192, 203, 264, 273, 285, 
298 

Eobanus Hessus, 231 

Erasmus, 126, 231 

Erckmann-Chatrian, 139 

Europe, i, 4, 5, 9, 11, 17, 23, 
40, 43, 44, 48, 55, 58, 63, 65, 
89, 102, 103, 113, 121, 160, 
164, 171, 208, 245, 269, 273, 
310 



Fallmerayer, 29 

Fehrbellin, 132, 225, 283 

Finland, 268 

Fischart, 125 

Forbach, 102, 125, 140 

France, 6, 32, 42, 67, 68, 73, 
86, 97, 98, 99, loi, 103, 104, 
105, 106, 107, 108, 113, 115, 
116, 119, 128, 129, 130, 131, 
136, 138, 142, 143, 145, 150, 
152, 161, 168, 172, 178, 181, 
185, 208, 209, 215, 270, 274, 
282, 309, 323, 326 

Franconia, 277 

Frankfort, 217, 318 

Frederick, 202, 206, 217 

Frederick the Great, 298 

Frederick William, 282, 283 

Freiburg, 100, 122, 124, 129, 
180 

Fridolin, 124 

Friedrich Karl, 215 



Fuad Pasha, 31, 38 
Fvirstenberg, Francis Egon von 
131, 132 



Gagern, 98 

Gaisberg, 157 

Galata, 17, 35 

Gambetta, 195, 207 

Ganges, 8, 35 

George of Saxony, Duke, 256 

Germany, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 59, 
62, 71, 72, 73, 85, 86, 87, 88, 
89, 97, 98, 99, 100, loi, 103, 
104, 105, 106, 108, 109, III, 
112, 115, 118, 128, 129, 138, 
141, 143, 149, 151, 153, 154, 
159, 161, 162, 164, 167, 168, 
169, 172, 173, 174, 180, 182, 
184, 187, 189, 190, 193, 194, 
199, 204, 213, 215, 218, 219, 
224, 225, 235, 236, 242, 246, 
247, 248, 249, 250, 252, 253, 
258, 259, 264, 269, 270, 274, 
275, 277, 278, 279, 281, 282, 
283, 292, 294, 299, 305, 312, 
313, 322, 323, 324, 328 

Germersheil, 324 

Gerokoi, 17 

Gibraltar, 6 

Gironde, 136 

Giskra, 83 

Gneisenau, 171, 201 

Goeben, 214 

Goethe, 123, 134, 146, 157, 221, 
250 

Gortchakof, 57, 61 

Gottfried of Strassburg, 125 

Granada, 27 

Gravelotte, 102 

Great Britain, 82 

Greece, 21, 29, 42, 45, 46, 58, 
61, 62, 93, 257, 284 

Grombach, 128 

Guel-Baba, 84 

Gulhane, 31 

Gunstett, 139 

Gustavus Adolphus, 228, 261- 
286 



332 



Index 



Gustavus Vasa, 263, 264 
Gutenberg, 127 

H 

Hagen, 124 

Hagenau, 126, 127, 171 

Halberstadt, 271 

Halle, 251 

Hamburg, 315 

Hanover, 217, 320 

Hansa, 90 

Hanseatic League, 262, 263 

Hapsburgs, 270, 273 

Hatti-Shereef, 31 

Hausser, Ludwig, 157, 201 

Hedio, 128 

Heidelberg, 129, 180 

Heine, 141 

Heligoland, 6 

Henry II, 99, 129 

Henry IV, 116 

Herder, 134 

Hesse, 122, 217, 266, 272, 320 

Hesse, Grand Duke of, 172 

Hildesheim, 131 

Hoche, 175 

Hoh-Barr, 122, 130 

Hohenstein, 127 

Hohenstaufen, 116, 125, 185 

Hohenzollern, 103, 179, 185, 

297 
Holland, 6, 165, 181, 273, 285 
Holstein, 266 
Holy Roman Empire, 202, 228, 

230, 244, 246, 247, 292, 296, 

301 
Hugo, Ludolf, 292 
Humboldt, 98, 112 
Hungary, 21, 84 
Hutten, Ulrich von, 2, 251 



Ibrahim Pasha, 43 
111, 194 

India, 20, 57, 66, 92 
Ingermanland, 268 
Ingolstadt, 324 



Italy, 2, 9, 69, 94, 116, 121, 258, 
298 



J 



Jahdebusen 271 

Jakschitsch, 42, 47 

Jena, 109, 202 

Jerusalem, 27, 233 

Johann Georg, 179 

John Frederick of Saxony, 266 

Joseph, Emperor, 4 

Joseph II, 55 

Jung, 136 

Jura, no, 119 

Jutland, 271 

K 

Kaiserberg, Gailer von, 127 

Kant, 241 

Karelia, 268 

Karlsruhe, 165 

Kashgar, 66 

Kastemburg, 128 

Kazan, 57 

Kehl, 99 

Kellermann, 106 

Kleber, 106 

Kleeburg, 157 

Koch, 134 

Koniggratz, 203, 205 

Konigsburg, 21 

Koran, 12, 27, 33, 35 

Kutchuk-Kainarji, 25, 54, 55 



Lamartine, 86 
Landau, 129 
Langiewicz, 69 
Lauterburg, 115 
Lebas, 136 
Lech, 278 
Ledochowsky, 69 
Lefebvre, 106 
Legoyt, 145 
Leipzig, 98, 154, 276 
Leitha, 16 
Lenz, 134 



Index 



333 



Lesseps, de, 8 

Leuthen, 225 

Liebenstein, 165 

Lille, 121, 151 

Lissa, 94 

Livonia, 268 

Loire, 207, 209, 213 

London, 8, 40, 64 

Longwy, 117 

Lorraine, 97, 98, 103, 106, 117, 

118, 121, 130, 133, 154, 157, 

164, 168, 174, 175, 190, 194, 
Louis XIV, 105, 115, 129, 180 
Louis Napoleon, 156 
Loyola, Ignatius, 237 
Liibeck, 129, 271 
Ludwig (Louis) I, of Bavaria, 

321 
Ludwig II., 166 
Luther, Martin, i, 48, 105, 227- 

260, 277 
Liitzen, 260, 281 
Luxemburg, 120 
Lyons, 116 

M 

Machiavelli, 2, 19, 242 
MacMahon, 68 
Madenburg, 129 
Madrid, Peace of, 116 
Magdeburg, 271, 275 
Mahmud II, 31. 35» 36 
Mainz, 121, 168, 304 
Malmedy, 121 
Malta, 6 
Manchester, 82 
Manderscheidt, Johann von, 

130 
Mans, Le, 210, 214 
Mansfeld, 250 
Marceau, 175 
Marienburg, 130 
Mark, 274 
Mars, 102 

MarsiHus of Padua, 244 
Mars la Tour, 215 
Mathy, 165 
Matthieu, 138 
Maurice of Saxony, 130, 205 



Maximilian of Bavaria, 270, 

278 
Mecca, 14 

Mecklenburg, 191, 272 
Mediterranean Sea, 6, 20, 83, 

93,94 

Meissen, 271 

Melanchthon, 255 

Mesopotamia, 42 

Metternich, 63, 134 

Metz, 96, 119, 120, 154, 162, 

169, 205, 225, 324 
Meurthe, 120 
Milan, 270 
Mohammed, 11, 20 
Moldavia, 61 

Moltke, 4, 201, 210, 212, 213 
Montenegro, ']'] 
Monte Pincio, 256 
Montfort, Simon de, 262 
Montjoie, 121 
Mortier, Fort, 99 
Moscow, 30, 76 
Moselle, 118, 119, 120, 138, 

177, 194, 219 
Muennich, 55 
Miilhausen, 124, 153, 158, 162, 

172 
Munich, 131, 163, 167, 170, 

171, 174, 182, 191, 278 
Miinster, 98 
Murad, 11 

Murner, Thomas, 125, 239 
Muselbruck, 118 



N 



Nancy, 118, 154 

Napoleon, 85, 94, 115, 141, 173, 

184, 213, 274 
Napoleon III, 39, 68, 145, 208, 

323 
Narew, 99 
Nassau, 217 

Nesselrode, Count, 35, 44 
Netherlands, 7, 105, 165, 172, 

183, 251, 271, 275, 291,304 
Neva, 3, 89 
Ney, 106 
Nice, 121 



334 



Index 



Nicholas, 5, 8, 55 
Nideck, 124 
Niederwald, 227 
Nomeny, 118 
Normandy, 112 
North Sea, 224, 271 
Nuremberg, 128, 129, 164, 278, 
281 



Oder, 283 
Of en, 21 
Ofenheim, 83 
Offenburg, 122 
Olmiitz, 96 

Orleans, Prince of, 184 
Osmans, 11, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 
23, 24, 25, 28, 36, 37, 49, 50 
Ostwald, 151 
Ottfried, 125 
Ottilia, 124 
Otto, 116 
Oxenstiern, 267 



Palmerston, 64 

Paris, 96, 97, loi, 107, 153, 

209, 215 
Paris Congress, 53 
Paris Convention, 87 
Paris, Peace of, 77, 87, 100, 

108, 112, 160 
Paris, Treaty of, 39, 60 
Patras, 25 
Paul, 237, 257 
Pera, 17, 68 
Pergamos, 25 
Peter the Great, 5, 36 
Petrarch, 242, 243 
Pfeffel, 138 
Philip II, 21 
Philip of Hesse, 261 
Piedmont, 78 
Plombiferes, 118 
Poland, 5, 26, 59, 90, 134, 

140, 181, 264, 268, 270 
Pomerania, 109, 274, 280, 324 
Pont-a-Mousson, 118 



Pontus, 92 

Posen, 154, 175, 219 

Prussia, 78, 89, 99, 100, 109, 
158-179, 181, 182, 203, 204, 
208, 217, 219, 223, 248, 268, 
283, 287, 294, 295, 296, 300, 
301, 304, 306, 311, 317, 321 

Pruth, 93 

Pufendorf, 252, 292 

Putter, 292 



Racine, 146 

Rapp, 106 

Rappoltstein, 122, 124 

Rappoltsweiler, 132, 155 

Rashid Pasha, 31 

Ratisbon, 118 

Rebenac, 133 

Reinmar of Hagenau, 125 

Remiremont, 118 

Rhine, 10, 71, 98, 99, loi, 104, 
106, 109, III, 112, 115, 121, 
122, 123, 134, 138, 152, 153, 
158, 163, 165, 166, 168, 170, 
175, 176, 181, 194, 198, 219 

Rhine Confederation, 100 

Rhineland, 278 

Rhone, 112 

Richelieu, 266, 284 

Roepell, 4 

Roggenbach, 165 

Rome, loi, 234, 252, 254 

Roon, 213 

Rotteck, 165 

Rouget de I'lsle, 154 

Riickert, 138, 140 

Rumania, 46, 58, 70, 87 

Rumelia, 47 

Rtigen, 274, 278 

Russia, 5, 7, 8, 13, 31, 36, 42, 

43» 47, 51, 53, 54, 55, 5^, 59. 
60, 61, 62, 64, 66, 68, 69, 70, 
73, 75, 78, 79, 80, 82, 86, 87, 
90, 112, 264 



Saar, 138, 171, 177 
Saarlouis, 162 



Index 



335 



St. Juste, 136 

St. Petersburg, 3, 9, 30, 31, 54, 

58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 66, 77, 78, 

79, 86, 89, 91, 93 
St. Privat, 205 
Salisbury, 82 
Salonica, 4, 34 
Savoy, 121 

Saxe, Mar6chal de, 105 
Saxony, 127, 272, 308 
Scandinavia, 263 
Scharnhorst, 212 
Scheldt, 60, 115 
Schiller, 158 
Schlegel, 109 
Schleswig-Holstein, 4, 7, 78, 

109, 154, 175, 214, 298 
Schlettstadt, 123, 128, 185 
Schmalkaldic League, 128, 266 
Schneegans, 147 
Schneider, Eulogius, 136 
Schonen, 264 
Schongauer, 125 
Schopflin, 134 
Schutzenberger, 147 
Schwdbische Volkszeitung, 163 
Schwarzwald, 128, 148 
Schwarzwald Belchcn, 122 
Schwelm, 193 
Scutari, 17 
Sebastopol, 60 
Sedan, 209, 212, 215, 225, 

311 
Seine, 112 

Servia, 42, 46, 73, 79, 83 
Seven Years' War, 223 
Shaftesbury, Lord, 13 
Siebenburgen, 257 
Sigismund, 264 
Silesia, 99, 109, 157, 219 
Smyrna, 25 
Spain, 21, 251, 275 
Spener, Phihp Jacob, 131, 150 
Spires, 128, 129 
Stallupohnen, 193 
Stamboul, 17, 38, 47, 51, 59, 

62, 64, 81, 91 
Starkenburg, 122 
Staupitz, 231 
Stein, von, 98, 112 



Steinbach, Erwin von, 104 
Stettin, 140 
Stilling, 134 
Stober, Adolf, 157 
Stober, August, 157 
Stockholm, 262 
Stockmar, von, 5 
Stralsund, 276 

Strassburg, 96, 99, 109, 123, 
125, 126, 127, 128, 131, 132, 

134. 135. 138, 150, 153, 154, 

162, 168, 169, 176, 179, 185, 

187, 191 
Stratford, Lord, 38, 50, 52 
Strelitzi, 36 
Stuhm, 273 
Sturm, Jacob, 128 
Stuttgart, 191 
Suabia, 90, no 
Suez Canal, 8, 64, 83 
Suleiman, 18, 48 
Sulina, 87 

Sundgau, 122, 124, 149 
Sweden, 140, 181, 266, 268, 

273, 274, 279, 285, 298 
Switzerland, 105, 144, 172, 291, 

293 
Sybel, 201 
Syra, 25 
Syria, 39 



Tann, von der, 214 

Tetzel, 241 

Thann, 124 

Thirty Years' War, 131, 251 

Thomasius, 252 

Thugut, 55 

Thur, 117, 122 

Thuringia, 127, 281 

Tilly, 275, 276, 278 

Transylvania, 149 

Treves, 115 

Tronja, 124 

Tuilerie, La, 210 

Tuileries, 113 

Tunis, 94 

Turcos, 96 



336 



Index 



Turkey, 2, 3, 4, 13, 23, 24, 25, 
38, 39, 43, 44, 49, 5i, 52, 54, 
55, 57, 60, 61, 68, 70, 71, 92, 

Tyrol, 271 



U 



Uhland, Ludwig, 157, 178, 179, 

218 
Ulm, 128, 316 
United States of America, 289, 

290, 292, 293 
Urbes, 117 
Urquhart, David, 4 



Vdmb^ry, 64 
Vauban, 177 
Vendue, 137 
Venice, loi 

Versailles, 118, 133, 220, 297 
Vienna, 40, 71, 83, 92 
Virginia, 26 
Vistula, 10, 99, 130 
Vogii^, Marquis de, 68 
Vosges, 102, 117, 119, 121, 
138, 148, 180, 199, 220 

W 

Waitz, 288 
Wales, Prince of, 39 
Wallachia, 61 

Wallenstein, 266, 271, 272, 275, 
276, 281, 283 



Waltharius, 124 

Walther von der Vogelweide, 

125, 235 
Wanzenau, 123 
Wartburg, 248 
Wasgau, 117, 122, 149 
Wasgenstein, 124 
Waterloo, loi 

Weimar, Bernhard von, 105 
Weissenburg, 125, 137, 139, 

166, 205 
Wellington, 102 
Werben, 276 
Werther, von, 85 
Wesel, 162 
Weser, 283 
Wesserling, 117 
West Flanders, 121 
Westphalia, 131, 280 
White Mountain, 260 
Wickram, George, 125 
Wilhelmshaven, 271 
William, Emperor, 204 
William, King, 96, 213, 297 
William of Orange, 262, 269 
Wimpfelingen, 127 
Wismar, 271 

Wittenberg, 127, 231, 239, 256 
Worms, 129, 230 
Worth, 109, 140, 166, 205 
Wurmser, 137 
Wiirttemberg, 100, 166, 173 



Zabern Stair, 122 
Zorn, 122, 124 
Zwingli, 128 



Jl Selection from the 
Catalogue of 

C. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Complete Catalogue sent 
on application 



The Confessions of 
Frederick the Great 

and 
Treitschke's "Life of Frederick" 

Edited, with a Topical and Historical Introduction, by 

Douglas Sladen 

12\ $1.25 

The coupling of these two works in a single 
volume has a significance apart from the fact that 
they have bearing — the one as an intimate ex- 
pression, the other as an able biographical sketch 
— upon one of the great figures of Prussian and 
world history. Treitschke strongly influences the 
philosophy of war and the views regarding the 
destiny of the German nation embodied in 
Bernhardi's much discussed book, and Frederick's 
CONFESSIONS, in the opinion of Mr. Sladen. 
is the soil from which the school of Treitschke 
and Bernhardi drew sustenance. 

New York G, P. Putnam's Sons London 



Deutschland Uber AUes 

Or Germany Speaks 

A Collection of the Utterances of Representative 
Germans — Statesmen, Military Leaders, Scholars, and 
Poets — in Defence of the War Policies of the Fatherland. 

Compiled and Analyzed by 

John Jay Chapman 

16\ 75c 



Alsace and Lorraine 

From Caesar to Kaiser. 58 B.C.-1871 A.D. 

A sketch of the political affiliations of the provinces 
before the creation of the Reichsland of Elsass- 
Lothringen. 

By Ruth Putnam 

Author of " A Mediaeval Princess," " Charles the Bold," 
" William the Silent," etc. 

With Eight Maps, ST. $125 

Alsace — Romans, Gauls, and Others on the Soil of 
Alsace — The Treaties of Verdun and Other Pacts Affect- 
ing Alsace—The Dream of a Middle Kingdom — The 
People of Alsace in the 15th Century and After — The 
Thirty Years of War and the Peace of Westphalia — Louis 
XIV and Strasburg — Alsace after Annexation to France — 
Lorraine in Several Phases of itsHistory — ^Alsace-Lorraine, 
1871-1914. 

New York G. P. Putnam's Sons London 



The Great Illusion 

By Norman Angell 
A Study of the Relation of Military 
Power to National Advantage. 

Fourth Edition Revised with Additional Material 
Crown 8°. $1.00 

"Mr. Angell throws into the dust-bin the worn-out 
theories, the axioms of statecraft, the shibboleths of 
diplomats, the mouthings of politicasters, as to the 
necessity of war. And from this to a brilliant arraign- 
ment of standing armies and navies and war establish- 
ments of all kinds is but another step in Mr. Angell's 
altogether splendid monograph. To use a familiar 
phrase, no book of similar trend in recent years has 
caused so many thinking men to sit up and take notice." 

St. Louis Globe''Democrat 



Arms and Industry 

A Study of the Foundations of Inter- 
national Polity 

By Norman Angell 

Author of " The Great Illusion," etc. 
12\ $1.25 
In this book the author of " The Great Illusion " shows 
systematically and scientifically, though with the same 
clearness and simplicity which mark his earlier work, the 
nature of those forces which are transforming the re- 
lationship of states, and indeed, to some extent, the 
mechanism of organized society as a whole. 



New York G. P. Putnam'S Sons London 



Treitschke 

12\ $1.50 

The Writings of Bernhardi's Teacher, 

Heinrich von Treitschke, Together 

with a Life, by His Close 

Friend, Adolf Hausrath 

The works of this great German historian 
have shaped the present policy of Germany in 
its attempt to secure a dominating influence in 
Europe and throughout the world. The follow- 
ing is a brief summary of the subjects presented 
in this distinctive work : 

I. Treitschke 's Life and Work, by Adolf 
Hausrath. 2. The Army. 3. International Law. 
4. German Colonization. 5. The Two Emperors. 
6. In Memory of the Great War. 7. Germany 
and the Neutral States. 8. Austria and the 
German Emperor. 9. Russia from the German 
Point of View. 10. On Liberty. 

Treitschke was a close friend of Bismarck, and 
his list of pupils include the political and military 
leaders of the present generation, such as the 
Emperor William, Bernhardi, and others. 

Lord Acton says of Treitschke: "He is the 
one writer of history who is more brilliant and 
more powerful than Droysen; and he writes 
with the force and incisiveness of Mommsen, 
but he concerns himself with the problems of 
the present day, problems that are still demand- 
ing solution.** 



New York G. ?• Putnam's SonS London 



The Real 
"Truth About Germany" 

From the English Point of View 
By Douglas Sladen 

Author of " Egypt and the English," etc. 
With an Appendix 

Great Britain and the War 

By A. Maurice Low, M.A. 

Author of " The American People," etc. 

300 pages. 12°. Cloth. $100 

Mr. Sladen has taken as his text a pamphlet which, while not 
formally published, has been widely circulated in the United StateSf 
entitled The Truth About Germany. This pamphlet was prepared 
in Germany under the supervision of a Committee of Repre- 
sentative Germans, and may fairly be described as the "official 
justification of the War." Care has been taken to prevent copies 
from finding their way into England, which has caused Mr. Sladen 
to describe the pamphlet as The Secret White Paper. He has taken 
up one by one the statements of the German writers, and has 
shown how little foundation most of these statements have and 
how misleading are others which contain some element of truth. 
In answering the German statements, Mr. Sladen has naturally 
taken the opportunity to state clearly the case of England. England 
claims that it was impossible to avoid going into this struggle if 
it was to keep faith with and fulfill its obligations to Belgium 
and Luxemburg. Apart from this duty, it is the conviction of 
England, that it is fighting not only in fulfillment of obligations 
and to prevent France from being crushed for a second time, but 
for self-preservation. The German threat has been made openly 
" first Paris, then London." 

In order that the case for England may be complete, the pub- 
lishers have added an essay by the well-known historian, A. Maurice 
Low. As the title. Great Britain and the War, indicates, England's 
attitude toward the great conflict is clearly portrayed, and her 
reasons for joining therein are ably presented. 

New York G. P. Putnam's Sons London 



France Herself Again 

By the Abbe Ernest Dimnet 

5°. A bout 400 pages. $2.50 

This is an authoritative work by an author 
who has gained well-earned fame as a historian. 
The purpose and general character of the book, 
which compares the demoralized France of 1870 
with the united France of to-day, may be seen 
by the chapter headings. 

Introductory : The Object of the Book 

Part I. The Deterioration 0! France 

1. Under the Second Eirnire 

2. Under the Third Republic 

Part II. Tho Return of the Light 

1. Immediate Consequences of the Tan- 

gier Incident 

2. Intellectual Preparation of the New 

Spirit 

3. Evidences of the New Spirit 

Part III. The Political Problems and the 
Future 

Part IV. France and the War ol 1914 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



H 302 85 



<i,^ ^C'o^ %^ 




y* xV '^^ 







cVA 










}^ ^ \^ ''^ 














' • G^ -cs '0-. 7 • A 



o 

^- Deacidified using the Bookkeeper pro< 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium-Oxide 

=v "-^^^S J^ (^ '>^*^^-' PreservationTechnoloc 

^- V ^•, *^ ^V A WORtD LEADER IM PAPER PRESERV* 

V » *ia.,<W^'*' -<k -Jl'' w* 111 Thomson Park Drive ' 




'^> 



/k' •% .<o 








O M 



0" ^^ .C" *V'^ 






KMAN 

RY INC. 



MAY 85 



LIBRARY OP 




